


An Informal Barisi Collection

by orphan_account



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Single Parent, As I Add to This, Christmas, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Kidfic, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Secret Relationship, Vacation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 16:23:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 21,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14773056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A collection of head canon/prompt requests that I have previously received and filled out on my tumblr.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If any of you follow me over on [**tumblr**](booyahkendell.tumblr.com), you know that I receive a pretty large amount of head canon/prompt requests in my inbox which I typically fill and post straight onto my blog. At one point, I attempted to unsuccessfully organize and compile all of these requests into a master list for my blog, but found that my requests simply go too far back for me to ever dream of actually turning them into an organized list.
> 
> So! Instead of doing that, I have decided to compile them all here so that they are all at least contained in a somewhat organized format so that if anyone ever wants to go back to re-read a request, they can do so here rather than trying to search the tags on my blog.
> 
> Request for this chapter was: _Ahhh I can't believe the first part of the mini fic didn't send. Anyway, the concept was that most of the squad has Find my Friends turned on since they seem to all have iPhones and after particularly bad days, or bad cases, benson will check before going to bed just to make sure her people are safe. And that's how she realizes over the course of a few weeks that Sonny is by Barba's apartment a little too much, which confirms her long-running suspicion that they're seeing each other._

Liv doesn’t put any stock into it being a serious thing, mostly because she’s actually, you know,  _met_  Rafael Barba, and him and any relationship that even comes close to resembling the word “serious” seems about as likely as him wanting to go on a date with Fin.

So she figures it’s just hooking up, mostly Rafael texting Sonny when he’s feeling lonely and needs some comfort, and Sonny doing everything in his power to oblige the other man, _always_ , because if there’s one thing that Liv is absolutely certain of, it’s the fact that Sonny Carisi lives and breathes to please Rafael Barba and his ever-changing mood swings at every corner.

And despite the fact that Liv highly doubts that Sonny’s ever had a relationship that he  _hadn’t_ considered to be serious, she knows that that’s a line he’d let blur for Rafael; anything, always, she knows he’d do, to be even just a little bit closer to the man who he’d had stars in his eyes over since the first day that they’d met.

After a month or so of this going on, though, Liv finally decides that she needs to confront Rafael about the entire ordeal. Mostly because, if anything sours between them, she doesn’t want to have to deal with the fall out that it would most likely bring to the precinct. Liv doesn’t care what –- or who –- Rafael does in his free time, but if it’s something that could possibly impact her squad, she has a right to be clear with him about a few things – mostly the fact that, if he hasn’t already, he needs to make it clear with Sonny that it’s only a casual fling happening between them so that his feelings aren’t too hurt when it all inevitably ends. That way, the peace is kept in her squad room, and she doesn’t have to hear Rafael whining about being the cause of Carisi’s sad puppy dog face the next time that they go out for drinks.

She eventually brings it up to him one day when they’re in his office going over paperwork for a case, both of them deciding it’s time for a fifteen minute break or so in which Rafael can restart the coffee pot and Liv can quietly plan everything she’s going to say to him on her and Sonny’s behalf.

Once he’s sat back down across from her, refilled mug in hand and phone face down on his desk after he’d spent their break scrolling through emails, Liv starts with an innocuous enough comment just to break the ice on what’s sure to be a painfully awkward conversation to follow.

“So I’ve noticed something a bit odd going on within the precinct recently.”

Rafael doesn’t even bat an eye, simply humming at her comment as he takes a sip from his mug and holds her gaze, his raised eyebrows the only signal that she gets to continue.

“You know how we all have that ‘Find My Friends’ app on our phones, right?” she asks, only continuing once Rafael’s given a small nod of his head over the brim of his mug. “Well, I like to check it sometimes, just on the nights when I know that everyone’s been put through the wringer. SVU’s tough. I like to make sure that none of my people are sitting at a bar every night like a certain ADA I know did when he first started with us.”

Rafael chuckles at that, either seemingly still not having put two-and-two together yet or exceptionally good at controlling his emotions in awkward situations like the one she’s currently putting him in; if it’s the latter, she thinks, they should be putting Barba through undercover work even before Carisi.

No matter what the reasoning, though, Liv can’t put off letting him know that she knows any longer.

“I’ve noticed that Carisi’s been spending quite a bit of time near your apartment.”

Finally, then, the cracks in the armor finally start to show through.

It starts in his face, with the furrowing of his brows and the deep-chested sigh that erupts from between his lips, followed by his shoulders and the rest of his body sagging backwards into the upholstery of his chair. He pinches his nose next and sets his mug down with the other hand, and Liv watches a few brown droplets spill over the side and onto their paperwork as Rafael closes his eyes and prepares for her onslaught.

“Look, Rafael, you know that I don’t care what you do outside of the office, I really don’t,” she starts, laying a palm on top of his own where it rests against the wood paneling of his desk. “But Sonny’s one of my detectives, and a damn good one at that. I can’t risk losing him if something… _happens_ between you. So all I’m asking is that you let him know now that you’re doing isn’t serious, so that way–-”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Rafael interrupts, eyes flying open to find her’s once more, green and wide and in shock as he snatches his hand out from under her’s as if the touch of her skin’s burned him. “You think I’m…I’m  _using_  Sonny for sex? For late night hook-ups, because I’m some lonely old man who can’t be bothered with actual relationships because I’m too committed to my career?”

“Rafael, that’s not what I said–-” Liv tries, but he isn’t having it, standing from his desk and turning away from her to pace the perimeter of his office.

“Did you even bother to think what cases you’d been working the nights that you saw that Sonny was at my place?” Rafael asks, quietly, and Liv can’t place the almost-pleading look that she finds in her friend’s eyes as she turns inwards and tries to rack her brain for the last night that she opened the application and seen Sonny and Rafael’s dots almost on top of each other.

“Uh…well, Monday was the Sadie Franklin case,” Liv offers, speaking of the woman who’d showed up to the precinct Monday morning with finger-shaped bruises all up her arms and down her back, pleading with them to arrest her husband before he hurt her or their daughter even worse.

Rafael nods at that, staying quiet, eyes still wide and searching her’s that has Liv feeling as though she should be catching onto something obvious that she isn’t. After a few more seconds, though, Rafael sighs, and relents, a hand scrubbing over his face as he does so, turning back to her and fixing their gazes as he says, “Liv, the last time that SVU had a case that involved a battered married woman, Sonny watched her die in front of him.”

Liv feels something cold enter her chest, then, seeping between her ribs as Rafael continues, his voice raising in height each time that he fills the space between them with evidence of all the things that she should’ve noticed.

“I’m sure you also saw him at my apartment the night after you and Fin carried Cora Jennings’s body out from behind Central Park. Or when Rollins had to talk down Simon Castiff after he decided to take her and the rest of the restaurant where you were operating your sting hostage.”

And then, with tired eyes and in the softest voice she’s ever heard from him, he says, “Liv, Sonny’s been having flashbacks. He has PTSD. And he comes over to my apartment so that I can help talk him down.”

It’s as if her entire being is frozen in shock and in place as she simply opens her mouth and watches – watches as Rafael circles slowly back around to his desk, a heavy sigh leaving his body as he sits down and pushes his mug out of the way with a disinterested flick of his hand. 

“I’m not going to lie to you and say that we haven’t slept together,” he says, looking over to find her gaze with a fierceness that tells of a protective streak he feels for the man who’d been at his apartment for the better part of two months. “But it’s also not…whatever you thought it was. I know you said you only check the app during the week, but he’s at my place every weekend as well. We do couple things, out, in public. I’m not ashamed of him. We go to the farmer’s market, hold hands, cook dinner together because it helps Sonny relax.”

Liv nods, shame and guilt still sitting heavy in her gut, though, even as Rafael reciprocates her earlier gesture and takes her hand. 

“Don’t…don’t feel bad that you missed this, okay? He’s good at hiding it, trust me, I know. But he’s better now, and he’s getting better every day. But please believe me when I say that Sonny isn’t just some fling. I realized a long time ago how important he is to me, and now that I have him, I’m not letting that go.”

At that moment, with her stomach still aching and her friend’s palm in her’s, Liv isn’t quite sure what to say – all that she knows, for certain, is that she needs to do better, and offer Sonny all of the support that he’d be missing when she’d been too caught up in her own personal entanglements to notice that one of her detectives was hitting his bottom. 

Now, though, as she looks into Rafael’s eyes, she thinks that maybe he hadn’t ever been all alone in his struggle, and she thanks god for that.

So she gathers herself, and takes a deep breath, and squeezes Rafael’s hand as tightly as she can in an attempt to say everything that her mind won’t let her currently speak –-  _I’m sorry for judging you, for thinking so little of the kind of man that you are, for missing Sonny_.

_I’m happy for you because I know, deep down, how long you’ve wanted something like this_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request: _Could you write a story about rafael or Sonny being depressed and the other one helping them. Like making sure they get enough sleep and eat healthy and try to get them outside? It would mean so much to me. I'm dealing with a pretty bad depression right now. With a lot of suicidal thoughts. So if Rafael or Sonny can get through it, it would give me so much hope_

Sonny has to take a leave of absence from work following the car accident and Jules’ death, and its something that Rafael has to fight him on to get him to do, which scares Rafael more than anything. He hates seeing Sonny have so much disregard for his own mental health, hates hearing Sonny say to him over and over again how, “I’ll get over it, Rafi, I’ll be fine, just give me a couple days.”

And Liv’s reaction certainly isn’t helping matters.

Sonny passes his psych evaluation –- by telling half-truths about how he’s actually feeling, Rafael knows –- and Liv considers that to be the end of the entire situation. So Rafael decides, right then and there, when Sonny comes home from the NYPD’s psychologist at five one evening and goes straight into their bedroom only to sleep for the rest of the night, that he’ll fight and do everything in his power to advocate for Sonny and help him get better.

Sonny’s pissed at him at first when Rafael informs him that he went behind his back and asked –- more like  _told_ -– Liv to give him a couple of weeks off, yelling at Rafael with a heaving chest and wide, wet eyes, only to slam a dinner plate against the counter before stalking off into their bedroom and slamming the door behind him.

Rafael gives Sonny thirty minutes to calm down before he goes in to check on him, and when he pushes their bedroom door open slowly, the sight that he’s greeted with hurts like hot iron being pushed between his ribs. Because Sonny’s lying curled into himself on top of their bed, face screwed up and buried in a pillow as his chest heaves each time a muffled sob passes through his lips.

Rafael does the only thing that he can think to do in that moment, rounding their bed and climbing in behind Sonny, pressing his broad chest flush to Sonny’s back and wrapping strong arms around his waist so that Sonny can feel the full force of him just  _being there_.  

He holds on tight and keeps his lips pressed to Sonny’s hair, voice low and soft as he whispers into silver strands: “I’m here, Sonny, I’m here. Just hold onto me, I’m here.”

That night ends up being one of the worst panic attacks that Sonny’s has, and the nightmares start shortly after – Rafael starts to lose track of how many nights he has to talk Sonny down after he’s woken up in the middle of night, tears running fast and hot down in his face as he tells Rafael in between choked off breaths about Jules, and blood, and not doing enough.

He’s despondent most days, too, but Rafael remains thankful for every single day and night that they manage to get through together. He takes over cooking duties because otherwise Sonny wouldn’t bother to feed himself, and prods at him every morning to make sure that he’s taken a shower and changed into at least a clean shirt and jeans. He doesn’t push at Sonny to take off the Harvard sweatshirt, though, that he’s taken to pulling over his t-shirt every day.

And every Friday, after Sonny’s weekly therapy session, they hold hands and take a walk through Central Park to get Sonny out of the darkness of their apartment and the spiral of his own head for a little bit. More often than not, it’s the only time during the week that Rafael actually gets to see him smile –- not to mention those glorious dimples –-so the trip is more than worth the sweat and bugs he has to put up with while they’re there.

About a month into Sonny’s leave, then, they take a break during their weekly walk around the park, Rafael pulling Sonny by the hand onto a bench in the shade where they can sit and talk for a little bit before making their way through the rest of the park.

It’s another part of their routine, finding a bench to sit down about halfway down the park’s path where they can talk quietly about how that week’s therapy session went. Rafael never pushes Sonny to give him details, but he does like to at least check in and get a general feel of whether or not Sonny feels like it’s helping. 

And this week is no different, because as soon as their bodies hit the back of the bench, Sonny’s snuggling into the solid feel of Rafael’s side as he wraps an arm around skinny shoulders, his voice quietly offering up, “I had a good session today.”

Rafael hums, leans over to kiss the top of his head, murmurs, “I’m glad.” before turning to look back out over the rest of the park, knowing Sonny will tell him more if and when he wants to. So the words that come out of Sonny’s mouth next are absolutely not what he’s expecting.

“I’m sorry,” he feels, whispering into the fabric of his shirt, and Rafael pulls back immediately, trying to find Sonny’s eyes underneath the mess that his un-gelled hair, all floppy and curling over his forehead as he resolutely looks down and somewhere in the direction of Rafael’s pants.

Rafael opens his mouth to speak, but Sonny’s already taken a sharp breath, words rushing out like he’s afraid if he doesn’t get them out quickly enough, Rafael won’t let them even take form on his lips.

“Just–-just listen, okay? I’m sorry, Rafi. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry that I’ve put you through all this shit the last month, that I’m not–-that I’m not myself or who you signed up to be with. I’m just…I know I’m fuckin’  _awful_ to be around right now, and you’ve been so amazing, and you’ve helped me so much, and I-–I haven’t done anything for you in so long. I love you so much, though, you know that, right? I really do, even if I haven’t been actin’ like it. ‘Cause I honestly don’t even know if I’d…if I’d even be here still if I didn’t have you.”

Sonny’s taking in deep, wet breaths then, hand toying with Rafael’s fingers laid on the bench between them, and Rafael feels like he can’t breathe. 

What Sonny’s said, it’s hurting him, it’s all  _too much_ , but he still has to stay strong because finally Sonny is getting better and allowing himself to feel and work through all of the hurt that’s been clouding his heart and his mind, and he  _needs_  Rafael to ground him back down to the earth through it.

So he takes a deep breath, and murmurs, “Sonny, look at me.”, waiting until glassy blue eyes have lifted from the steady gaze that they’d held on his hand to continue speaking.

“I love you more than I thought it was possible for me to love someone,” is the first thing Rafael says, because he doesn’t ever want Sonny to forget that. It’s something that he feels in his heart, between his ribs, pushing at the front of every thought and breath that he takes, every day, and Sonny  _needs_  to know that.

“And I don’t care if I spend every day of the rest of my life like this if it means I still get to have you,” he continues, forehead tipping forward until it rests against Sonny’s own. “If it means I get to wake up next to you, I get to hold you, kiss you, make you smile – it’s all worth it if means I get to love you.”

Tears are spilling down Sonny’s cheeks now, silent as he gazes at Rafael, mouth only teasing upwards and into a grin when Rafael’s hands find his face and gentle thumbs brush at the wetness on his cheeks.

“This doesn’t feel like an inconvenience for me, okay?” Rafael asks, imploring with open green eyes for Sonny to understand. “This is me, taking care of the man that I love, because the only thing that I could ever want out of my life at this point is for you to be happy.”

And when he’s silent afterwards, focus solely set and sharp on Sonny’s face, Rafael hopes that the lips that find his and open up to him mean that Sonny is finally and truly beginning to understand the depths of the love that Rafael has for him.

Sonny Carisi is Rafael Barba’s present, future, and always, and Rafael will do everything in his power to keep the man who made those things a possibility safe, and whole, and happy.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request: _ze boys pre kids go to the beach baby!! But poor rafi is insecure ab his tummy and even more so when some frat esque boy flirts w son flower_

This particular summer, Rafael wants to go to Miami, for sun, and nightclubbing, and the beach, for relaxation, and wind in his hair, and the sight of Sonny’s cheeks when they inevitably turn pink from too many days spent laying out beside each other on the sand. And when he asks Sonny, who he knows has an aversion to too much sun due to being a “pasty-ass white boy” –- his words, not Rafael’s –- it surprisingly doesn’t take too much to convince him.

Rafael just has to promise not to shave his beard the entire time that they’re there and to take off his sunglasses as little as possible, and Sonny’s biting his lip and smiling, saying, “Oh, hell yeah, I’m in.”

Now, the thing that Rafael did not count on, when they planned this vacation back in November, was the five or so pounds he would gain between multiple trips to Staten Island for every holiday imaginable –- even some he didn’t know existed –- and the laziness that would come with wanting to stay inside on weekends to keep Sonny Carisi tucked away and all to himself in the confines of his apartment.

Honestly, he hadn’t even thought about it the entire flight down to Florida, hadn’t considered it in the months leading up to their trip –- he’d known he’d had to buy some things in a bigger size up, sure, but it’s not like Sonny had started looking at him any differently because of it. What was good enough for his ten years younger, unarguably gorgeous boyfriend was good enough for him.

That is, until it’s their first full morning in Miami, and they decide to spend it on the beach.

And Rafael looks around, once they’ve gotten their beach chairs and towels set out on a spot in the sand, and very quickly starts to feel as though he doesn’t measure up to a shirtless and swimsuit-wearing, wavy-haired Sonny. Or, a good number of the other people that are laid out all around them on the beach.

Sonny, meanwhile, very quickly balls up the t-shirt that he’d taken off, throwing it in the bag they’d brought with them down to the water to keep their phones and sunscreen in, and grabs Rafael’s hand while smiling, tugging on it and laughing as he makes for Rafael to follow him, saying as they start to take quick steps towards the ocean, “C’mon, Rafi, let’s just dip our feet in really quick!”

Rafael resists, though, stopping their path towards the water short, and Sonny turns to regard him with furrowed brows and a frown tugging at the corner of his lips.

“I’m just gonna put my sunglasses away,” Rafael gestures, index finger flicking to the designer brand aviators perched loosely on his nose, their shape next to his already-bronzing skin casting him in the light of  _the sexy movie star_  Sonny always says that he looks like when he pairs them with his more casual clothing. 

“Be right there,” he adds, giving Sonny’s hand a quick squeeze, and Sonny shoots him a small grin before nodding, and scaling the rest of the sand towards the water, his slim figure illuminated by the bright Miami sun.

Rafael tugs his sunglasses off once he’s reached the area where they’d set up their chairs, throwing them with a little too much force for how much money they were worth into the cloth bag that Sonny had tossed his t-shirt in. And with a deep breath, and a perfunctory glance at the beach-goers around them, he tugs at the hem of his own shirt, pulling it over his head and letting it fall carelessly across one of the beach chairs, giving himself a quick downwards once-over before turning back around to find his boyfriend among the crashing waves.

It hits Rafael between the ribs, the image that he’s greeted with once he’s found Sonny’s smile and sweet face once more: his love, grin stretched wide and showing dimples, wet curls flopping forward and encircling his head like a halo, and a man with a body equivalent to Chris Hemworth’s standing across from him, chest and ab muscles bared for all of the beach to see.

Now, Rafael knows that Sonny isn’t flirting, he knows that Sonny is just too oblivious and friendly sometimes than for his own good –- but he sure as hell notices the way that the other man’s eyes are tracing up and down Sonny’s legs, the way that he’s gotten closer to Sonny with every word that’s passed between them, and it’s only the embarrassment that he feels towards himself that’s keeping Rafael from charging over and shoving himself between them.

Instead, he walks back across the sand slowly, eyes narrowed towards the ground, getting closer and closer until he can finally hear the man ask, above the wind and above the sound of the waves breaking against the shore, “So, are you here by yourself this weekend?”

And feelings of inadequacy aside, Rafael’s about damn ready to scream –- that is, until Sonny answers before he can, “Uh, yeah, I’m here with my boyfriend, actually, I’m just waitin’ for–-oh, shit, there he is! Rafi, over here!”

And Rafael looks up just in time to see Sonny stick his fingers in his mouth and freaking _wolf whistle_  at him.

He’s grinning so widely, cheeks tinged pink from more than just the heat, blue eyes clear and set on Rafael like he’s the only thing that he’s ever wanted in life as Rafael takes the last three steps needed to reach him.

“God, isn’t he handsome?!” Sonny exclaims, a kiss pressed to Rafael’s cheek once he’s close enough and gotten Sonny tugged into the warmth of his side with a strong arm wrapped tight around his thin waist.

“ _Rafi_?” the other man asks incredulously, condescension thick in his tone as he offers Rafael a hand and a smirk, Rafael trying not to be intimidated by the size of the bicep that said-hand is attached to.

He takes the other man’s hand firmly, and meets his stare dead on, a smirk of his own plastered across his lips, because if there’s one thing that he is confident in, it’s Sonny’s love for him, and the fact that there’s nothing on this earth he wouldn’t do to defend what they feel for each other.

So he offers back, in his own tone, words fake and honey sweet, “Rafael. Rafael Barba.  _I’m_ Sonny’s boyfriend.”

And when Sonny pipes up from beside him, “ _And_ Manhattan’s sexiest ADA!”, Rafael can’t help but grin and tug his baby down for a kiss.

Only once they part, flushed and smiling, Rafael’s hands wide as he shelves Sonny’s hips between them do they notice that Chris Hemsworth Jr. had walked away, his figure clear-cut and noticeable among a group of men who appear to be laughing at the shutdown he’d received.

“Laying it on a little thick there, weren’t you?” Rafael murmurs, turning back to look into his favorite pair of bright blues as Sonny loops skinny arms around the width of his neck. “Handsome  _and_ sexy? Wolf-whistling? You could’ve just told the poor sap that you weren’t interested.”

“Eh,” Sonny grins, the look on his face cheeky and shit-eating, and before Rafael has a chance to call him out on it, Sonny’s adding, “‘sides, guy thinks he’s hot stuff just ‘cause he won a couple fitness competitions. Meanwhile,  _my man_  went to Harvard. Way sexier if you ask me.”

Rafael can’t help the way that his grip on Sonny tightens at the words, how every facet of his heart is screaming at him in that moment to take his love away, back to bed, where it can be just Sonny and Rafael again, against the world and surviving it only because they love each other every step of the way.

Before Rafael can put that pounding to words, though, Sonny finishes softly, “And I saw you looking at his body, too. Like you were embarrassed or something. To not look like that.”

He sighs, then, and pulls Sonny closer, close enough that he can feel the droplets of ocean water still covering Sonny’s skin damp against his own chest; close enough that he can feel Sonny’s heartbeat still racing, racing for him and their earlier kiss.

“I just…I know I don’t look like _that_ ,” Rafael sighs out, eyes drawn and focused to the curve of Sonny’s collarbone rather than his eyes. “And sometimes it can be a bit… _difficult_  realizing that I don’t when someone else who  _does_ look like that looks at you and recognizes how beautiful you are.”

When blue eyes duck to find his own, though, Rafael feels moored back down to the earth – his beautiful man is kissing him, pressing their foreheads together so close that they’re breathing the same air, pulling back to smile and whisper against his lips in tones that Rafael will never stop feeling honored to hear.

“Good thing you’re the only thing that I’ll ever want.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request: _Rafael commenting that sonny's left and right butt is not the same the right one is more round and plum but the left one got ore visible dimple_

They’ve just been moving around each other all morning, quiet, and smiley, and exchanging soft kisses, both thinking of what they’d shared together the night before. They’re already playing at possibly running late with the little moments of distraction, but there’s so many physical reminders of the previous night, that they can barely meet the other’s eyes without getting lost in each other again.

Because Sonny has three soft bruises near the bottom of his neck, where the lean length of it meets his collarbone, shades of deep purple and bruise that flutter so beautifully every time he moves his body around their bedroom, seeking out socks and a tie that match with the rest of his suit.

And Rafael has the long track marks of fingernails down the broad expanse of his back, a faded red that blends in with his tan skin in the morning light, but still blunt enough that they stick out enough for Sonny to notice.

Sonny is visibly sore, too, as evidence by the fact that he winces when he sits on their bed to put on his shoes, which has Rafael wondering in the back of his mind if he can manage to carry his love bridal-style into the kitchen for breakfast.

Once Sonny’s done getting dressed, he stands in front of their mirror just like he does every morning, pressing down the lines of his button up with his fingertips and making sure that his tie is laying flat underneath his vest. This morning, though, he has to take extra caution to insure that the marks of Rafael’s particularly amorous mood aren’t visible when he stretches and lifts his neck, and he’s at such a gorgeous angle when Rafael himself walks out of the bathroom, buttoning the cuffs of his shirt into place, that Rafael can’t help but pause and stare at every single piece of the man that he gets to call his.

Those long arms, that always wrap around his neck so tight when they kiss; those legs, that Rafael falls asleep with hooked around his hips every night; those baby blues, so bright in the sunlight filtering through their bedroom windows, and lighting up every angle of Sonny’s beautiful face; and that butt, that always, _always_ , ruins Rafael’s concentration at work, because Sonny literally cannot stop bending over every available surface possible so that he can take a closer look at whatever evidence Amanda or Fin is showing him.

Sonny is his to admire only, and it’s with that thought in mind that Rafael walks over to their bed, sitting himself down on it so that he’s directly behind Sonny figure, reaching out with large hands that find purchase on Sonny’s hip bones and bring him closer to Rafael’s chest.

“Hey!” Sonny laughs out, stumbling as he’s pulled backwards, smile bright and infectious and the only thing that Rafael’s certain will ever hold his heart in life. Sonny’s hands settle over his on his hips, and Rafael’s melting at the feeling, at Sonny’s smaller hands on top of his and the warmth that settles deep in his chest because of it.

“You know what I noticed last night?” he murmurs, low and nuzzling his nose into one of the sharp curves of Sonny’s hips. 

“Hmm?” Sonny hums, smile softening out as he tries not to squirm, ticklish at the feeling of the tip of Rafael’s nose digging into his clothed skin.

Rafael moves their joined hands further downwards, closer to the backs of Sonny’s thighs, and he drags his nose until it’s pressing against the small of his back, breathing in because Sonny still smells so much like himself, light and airy even covered in his button up and vest.

“That your butt is different,” Rafael replies simply, voice so pleased-sounding from behind Sonny, and all Sonny can do is raise an eyebrow and shoot his best,  _what the hell are you on, Rafi_  face as he stares at himself in the mirror, his boyfriend completely oblivious to the sentiment.

“My butt is…different?” Sonny finally asks, and feels Rafael nod against him, eager as he tightens the grip that they both have on Sonny’s legs.

“Mhmm. The right side is rounder, perkier. But on the left, you have this adorable dimple that I never noticed until last night.”

Sonny blushes at that, chin ducking as he fights the urge to pull away in embarrassment, whispering out instead, “And you like that?”

And god, Sonny’s heart just starts beating out of his chest as Rafael pulls him impossibly tighter against him, breathing out a,  _“Yes.”_ that seems to come from somewhere impossibly deep in his chest, his fingers digging so tight into the muscle of Sonny’s thighs that he’ll be surprised if he doesn’t find bruises there when he undresses before bed.

Not that he’ll mind, of course.

“ _God_ , of course, I do,” Rafael continues, voice muffled by the fabric that he’s breathing into, but still causing Sonny to feel light-headed and drunk on his affection all the same. “I love discovering parts of you that I’ve never seen before. I love being the one that gets to do that because you’re mine.”

And he presses the longest kiss to Sonny’s clothed back then, one that feels like love, and a promise, to never stop discovering all of Sonny that he can. 

It has Sonny groaning, whining, saying, “Seriously? You do this to me right before we gotta leave for work?” 

Rafael chuckles, only letting the sound carry off once he’s let go of Sonny’s hands, wrapping the length of his strong arms around Sonny’s waist. 

They stay like that, for long minutes, Sonny’s own fingers trailing back and forth down the lines of Rafael’s forearms and biceps, a surprised yelp leaving his mouth when the man behind him shifts an arm to underneath his thighs, and proceeds to carry him out to the kitchen. 

They’re laughing, and smiling, and happy, and so in love that it’s almost painful, and neither one of them ever wants their mornings spent like that to ever end.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request: _Rafael calls Sonny papi, and he's embarrassed but Sonny LOVES it_

Rafael should’ve realized from the moment that a gangly, blue-eyed mess from Staten Island stumbled into his heart and made it his home that he was too in love for dignity to even be a concern.

The only pressing thoughts he had now, with Sonny Carisi in his life, was which sci-ci thriller he wanted to pick out for their next movie night, and whether or not Sonny could legally consent to a marriage proposal sleepy, and pliant, and sweet on their shared mornings off.

He had both often, whispered every endearment under the sun to his Sonny in both moments, “love”, and “sweetheart”, “baby”, and “papi” kissed into his skin.

So when Rafael is sat at his conference table, files and manilla folders spread out around him, the squad taking up space on his couch or standing beside him, the urge to tamp down on calling Sonny something sweet never finds him.

They’re volleying tactics back and forth that he can try and use in court to get the charges that he’s bringing on a particularly shaky case to stick, Liv, Rollins, and Sonny walking him through their interrogations with the perp one last time so that they can splice out whether or not there are any details they missed before that he can use against the man tomorrow.

When it’s Sonny’s turn to run through his go at their perp, he’s standing tall and walking back and forth across the floor of Rafael’s office, blue eyes narrowed in concentration as he tries not to let any relevant details slip from the conversation that had led to the confession he’d gotten.

And he’s just.

He’s enrapturing.

Rafael is entirely and truly an audience brought to its knees in the face of Sonny Carisi.

The crease in Sonny’s forehead as he talks, thin fingers and wrists gesticulating, animating and vibrant and drawing the breath from Rafael’s lungs with every heavy syllable that falls from his tongue.

The way his mind works, rapid and sharp, colorful detail kept secure beneath wheat-colored locks that he only ever brings out for use solely with the intention of knocking Rafael flat on his ass.

Just that morning, before they’d left his apartment, Sonny had been able to recite ten more examples of obscure case law in five minutes than Rafael had been able to in the entire time they’d spent drinking their morning coffee, and Rafael hadn’t been able to help but to kiss him breathless before they’d walked out the front door.

He wants that now, he wants it so badly as Sonny walks, and gestures, and pauses to make sure he’s not adding any unnecessary details that’ll muddy his recount of the confession, and Rafael sits in smirking awe, watching him while the rest of the squad play on their phones.

It’s a privilege, then, when Rafael alone gets to watch Sonny fall back to silence.

Or, alone until words next fall from Rafael’s lips and he remembers that they very much are not by themselves, in the confines of Rafael’s apartment.

“They really are teaching you something at Fordham, aren’t they? You just handed my cross to me on a plate, papi.”

He says it smirking, smiling and bright-eyed, easy affection flowing through him as Sonny’s cheeks light up and he tries so hard not to think about what it would be like to press his lips to their warmth, right now.

But then Sonny’s still staring at him, face pink and shoulders stiff, and only after a few moments of confused silence between them does Rollins pipe up, voice high and honey sweet, “‘Papi’, huh?”

Rafael very much wishes he could drown himself in the toilet down the hall in that moment.

Sonny is fire engine red across every inch of his pale skin, bless his heart, and Rafael has to pinch the bridge of his nose and close screw his eyes shut tight to keep from developing an annoyance headache at the two women and man who are cackling at he and Sonny’s shared pain.

“God, never thought it’d be Barba who’d use the word ‘daddy’,” Rollins breathes out in between gasping laughs, which is when Sonny cuts in and comes around to stand at Rafael’s shoulder, a united front.

“Hey, quit being a pervert,” he scowls, dipping low to press a kiss to Rafael’s still downwards angled head, “that’s not what it means when he says that to me. It’s just supposed to be sweet, ‘cause he knows a like those kinda names. ‘Cause he loves me.”

At that, Amanda, Liv, and Fin shut up, too caught up in witnessing the great and feared ADA Rafael Barba respond to such a saccharine declaration of love.

Well, Rafael wouldn’t want to disappoint them.

He tugs on Sonny’s suit pants until his boyfriend is leaning down, folded in half, just close enough to Rafael’s reach for him to grab Sonny’s face in his hands and pull him in for a kiss.

It’s a kiss that says, “I love you, too, and I love how much you love those endearments, and I’ll keep saying them to you for the rest of your life if you’ll let me.”

He pushes his forehead to Sonny’s afterwards and doesn’t bother to say the words out loud. They’re for him and Sonny only, for moments like this when chaos invades the space that they’ve carved out for each other in their hearts, for in between soft sheets and to be spilled into bare shoulder blades over weekend breakfasts.

But he does whisper, “Now get back to work, papi.”, against Sonny’s smiling lips, and if the squad wants to judge him or them or to laugh at the sweet things Rafael says, so be it.

If it means never wiping that dimpled, baby blue grin from Sonny Carisi’s face, Rafael’s more than okay with a little teasing.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request: _I don’t know if you’ve talked about this already (I’m so out of the loop on tumblr these days), but what about Sonny and Rafael making ornaments with the kids every year? Like, the kind with salt dough and stuff. Cute little handmade, sentimental shit._
> 
> _Oh my god and then one year, after the kids moved out, Sonny is decorating the tree, and something happens and he fucking breaks one of them on accident. And Raf comes out of the kitchen with two hot cups of cocoa, his face dropping as he sees Sonny sitting down holding the broken pieces, tears in his eyes. Oh my god what if it is their first Christmas alone because the kids are gone doing stuff, I don’t know. College or something. And Sonny breaks down, upset over how fast everything went._
> 
> Also, if kidfic is your thing and you haven't already: check out my [**series**](https://archiveofourown.org/series/595135) dedicated to the building of Sonny and Rafael's little family that you'll see in this request here!

It's the one that they made as a family to commemorate Ollie's first Christmas with them.

The one that they sat down as a family and made together, the one that Sonny spent three hours on Pinterest the day before trying to figure out how to make, the one that he and Rafael spent an entire morning making the mold for before sitting Elisa down on Sonny’s lap, Oliver held in Rafael’s arms, and informing Elisa that that year they’d be making something special because it’s her baby brother’s first Christmas.

And it turns out, that what Sonny and Rafael have decided to make is an ornament for their tree with their two babies’ hands side-by-side.

They’d made the mold special that morning so that it’s all ready for Elisa to press her little hand into it, excitedly –- with Sonny’s help –- and for Rafael to maneuver Oliver’s small,  _so small_ , baby one onto, right next to the impression of his big sister’s slightly-bigger one. 

And Elisa’s basically jumping out of her skin with excitement was the mold has set and is dry, because she gets the “very special honor”, as Sonny says, of decorating the entire thing all by herself. 

Sonny and Rafael went crazy with buying her decorations from the craft store to do it with, their entire dining room table covered in an old tablecloth and essentially a mountain of glitter, puffy paint, and assorted stickers. 

With her little tongue poking out in concentration, just like her papi’s does, she uses her very best first-grader handwriting to write, in bright red puffy paint, her name and Oliver’s right above their handprints. Then she uses glue and about five different colors of glitter to decorate all around the sides of the mold, and sticks about ten various Christmas-themed stickers on it for good measure, which peel and fall off as the years go from losing their adhesive, but which Sonny catches, and sticks back on, every time, because the ornament has to be exactly as it was, all those years ago, when he and Rafael’s little family sat down as four instead of three for the first time at their dining room table and tried to make Oliver’s first Christmas with them special.

And twenty years later, when it’s Christmastime again, and Elisa and Oliver inform them both about their plans to spend Christmas away from their childhood home in Manhattan, Sonny and Rafael honestly aren’t all that upset.

Sure, of course they’re sad at the prospect of spending Christmas away from their babies –- Elisa and Oliver will  _always_ be their babies –- but they also recognize that their kids are grown up and have families and significant others of their own to tend to.

Elisa, wanting to spend Christmas with Becca farther up North, with her mom’s extended side of the family, and Oliver, wanting to travel to California with his boyfriend to meet his family for the first time isn’t something that they can let themselves get upset about –- not when their kids are thriving, and when that’s all that they’ve ever wanted from them.

Plus, it means a little extra husband time, and that never hurts.

So, the first Sunday in December –- the kids had informed them of their plans to spend the holiday away over Thanksgiving –- Sonny picks up their tradition of decorating the house as usual, spending the afternoon after church in the morning pulling all of their boxes, stuffed to the brim with ornaments and various decorations to put up around the house, out of storage and into a pile in the living room.

He puts on Christmas music, and sets to work setting up their fake tree –- he and Rafael have gotten a little too old to haul a real one on their own – first, smiling as he smells the familiar scent of his husband’s homemade hot chocolate rolling in from the kitchen.

And Sonny can admit, that that scent, right there, is enough to get him a little teary.

Not enough to make him full-blown cry, but it’s enough to remind him of similar afternoons like this one, when his “little helpers” would march up to the attic with him and help pull down as many boxes as their little arms could carry, when those same little helpers would beg Rafael for more whipped cream or more marshmallows in their hot chocolate. 

It should’ve been an indicator for how the rest of the afternoon would go, really.

Because once he’s gotten the tree set up, once the lights, and the tinsel, and the garlands are all looped around it’s synthetic branches, he starts to pull he and Rafael’s small army of ornaments out, one by one, pulling them out from underneath their tissue paper wrapping and setting them out on the coffee table in front of him to admire.

They have so many ornaments, collected from over the years, little paper and glue and macaroni ones that he remembers sitting at the dining room table making, with Elisa first, and then her and Oliver both as the years went on. 

Ornaments commemorating birthdays, and milestones, and ones that Elisa and Oliver had picked out for him and Rafael themselves as Christmas gifts, and then he reaches the one that he’s always held closest to his heart and he has to pause for a moment to suck in a breath.

Because it’s the one with he and Rafael’s babies’ handprints in it, so small and precious and covered in glitter, and there’s a reindeer sticker stuck to the tissue paper it was wrapped in that he sticks back to the ornament’s front. 

As he’s holding it in his hands, Sonny can just  _hear_  Elisa’s little voice, that Christmas when they’d made it, as she’d held on tight to his pant leg and pointed, as they’d stood in front of the Christmas tree, telling him how, “You gotta put it up the highest, daddy, ‘cause it’s the most special!”

And as he’s holding it in his hands, he remembers how he’d done just that. And how he’d done it every Christmas after.

And he’ll do it now, even though their babies won’t be here to see it, because that’s what Elisa had asked him to do, that very first Christmas as four instead of three.

So Sonny gets up from the couch, and goes to stand in front of the tree, and reaches up high, his height helping him just as it’d always had, and goes to place the ornament on one of the tree’s highest branches.

But what Sonny doesn’t count on are his hands shaking, with both age and the weight of sentimentality, and just when he thinks he’s gotten the ornament attached to his chosen branch, it slips from between his fingers and falls to the wood of the living room floor with a sharp  _crack_.

All he can do is breathe out, “No!”, fall to his knees and start to clutch at the pieces, and he can hear Rafael coming in from the kitchen, hear him asking, “Love, are you okay?”, but he can’t see his husband because tears are pooling in front of Sonny’s eyes as he holds the broken pieces in his hands.

He only looks up after a couple moments, sees Rafael standing in the doorway, their two mugs of hot cocoa in hand. Sees Rafael holding two mugs of hot cocoa that they used to share with their babies, and his head is falling forward to his chest as a sob rips through him, Rafael sighing out, “Oh, sweetheart.” as he sets the mugs down on the coffee table and gets down on the floor close to Sonny.

Which just makes Sonny cry even harder, because his husband with his bad knees is getting down on the floor to make it all better, but Rafael can’t even do that because this isn’t something that Sonny  _can get back_. 

Rafael, of course, recognized the ornament instantly the moment that he’d stepped into the living room, even smashed to pieces in Sonny’s hands. And he’d felt a pang in his own chest at the thought of such a special little memory being broken, a strong pang, but it’s nothing compared to what he’d felt at seeing his Sonny crying and being broken, too.

So he gets down on the floor, and covers Sonny’s hands with his, getting Sonny to let go of the broken pieces and letting him nuzzle and cry into his neck. He sets the pieces back on the ground so he can shush and rub Sonny’s back, so he can hold him close and try at reassurance. He whispers out, “It’s okay, love, I know it won’t be completely the same, but we can try to glue it back together, maybe get the pieces put in a shadow box–-”, but Sonny’s cutting him off.

He whispers out, “N–-no, Rafi, we can’t. We can’t fix it, we can’t get it back. We can’t get it back, just like we can’t get back our little boy and little girl.”

And Sonny sounds like he needs to vent, so Rafael lets him. He just runs fingers through his gray hair, along his spine, and listens as Sonny sobs out, “We can’t get back Christmas mornings where they’d jump in our bed and wake us up ‘cause they were just  _so excited_ to see what Santa brought them. We can’t get back hot chocolate, and makin’ cookies, and gettin’ flour everywhere, on their little noses. We can’t get back Christmas pajamas, Rafi. And we can’t get back our first family ornament ‘cause our babies have their own families and they aren’t little anymore.”

Every word is like a dagger to Rafael’s heart. To hear Sonny, so obviously hurting, to hear his broken voice, to feel his body broken and sagged against his own in pain, just as broken as the ornament at their feet.

Rafael knows he has to be strong for them both, so he steels himself, and pulls back, just far enough until he can take Sonny’s face in his hands –- his beautiful face, with more laughter lines by his mouth and eyes than twenty years ago, but with blue eyes that still make Rafael’s heart skip a beat.

He thumbs at the tears still spilling down Sonny’s cheeks, wipes them away before saying, “You are right that they aren’t little anymore, love, and maybe some of those things we can’t get back. But they will always be our little boy and little girl, and you know that. No matter what, no matter where they are, that will always be true, and nothing can take that away. Not even an ornament.”

He smiles at Sonny at that, even when a final stray tear manages to make it’s way down Sonny’s face –- he can see his words worming their way into Sonny’s mind, into Sonny’s heart. He’s nodding, because he knows that Rafael’s words are true, even as much as it feels like his entire chest will break if he considers the broken ornament at their feet again.

Rafael kisses his forehead before he can, and scoops up the pieces in his palms. He manages to get back up with minimal effort, and moves towards the kitchen, looking back at Sonny to say, “Now I’m going to be the best husband ever and try and hot glue this back together, okay? You drink your hot chocolate before it gets cold and finish decorating the tree.”

Sonny smiles at him from his place still on the floor, small, but it’s a start. Only does Rafael turn fully back around to peruse where in their house they’d store a glue gun once Sonny’s stood up, and begun to move towards the pile of ornaments still sat out on their coffee table.

And as Rafael walks away, down the hallway and back into the kitchen, he mentally starts to plan Sonny’s Christmas gift for the following year.

He’ll have to dig around a bit for the instructions, but he’s sure he’ll find it, somewhere in the hoard of things that Sonny refuses to throw away. And he’ll only require a little bit of help from Elisa and Oliver.

Their handprints will be bigger, but the sentiment should be the same.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request: _Oliver asking Rafael how he'll know when to have sex with Eli after rafi finds his condom stash._
> 
> FYI: Again, if you don't follow this series/the extensive head canons about the Barba-Carisi family that I have already written on my tumblr, Elijah -- Eli for short -- is Oliver's high school boyfriend.

Oliver’s been doing homework at the kitchen table, Rafael making dinner while Sonny works late, and when Oliver looks up and asks his dad if he’ll grab him some more looseleaf notebook paper from his bedroom, Rafael is more than happy to oblige.

So he goes upstairs, roots around in the little table next to Oliver’s bed, and comes up empty for notebook paper but sure as hell does not miss the box of condoms, top open and shoved at the back.

And he goes back downstairs, calmly, quietly, because honest to god, Rafael isn’t upset or mad –- he and Sonny have never had any issues with their kids exploring their sexuality as teenagers, just as long as it was done safely. 

So really, more than anything, Rafael’s just curious to know if Oliver and Eli have actually started having sex or not, just to make sure that they’re being safe about it.

Once he’s in the kitchen again, Oliver’s still hunched over his homework, so Rafael quietly walks over to the table and places the package of condoms in front of him before stepping back, staying silent.

Immediately, he watches as the tips of Oliver’s ears start to burn red, so much like Sonny’s do when he’s embarrassed, and his whole face lights up with it, a muffled, “Oh god” falling from his lips as he covers his cheeks and eyes with his hands and Rafael chuckles across from him.

“You know I’m not mad, right, bud?” Rafael asks, unable to contain his grin as Oliver peeks out from behind a hand. “All I wanna know is whether or not you and Eli have started having sex, and then we can leave it at that if you’d like.”

 “No, dad, we haven’t started having sex,”  Oliver groans, reaching out to snatch up the box. “I just got those in case… _something_  did happen.”

Oliver looks down at that, and Rafael sense a bigger conversation than the one that they’re currently having coming on. So he sits down across from his son, leaning forward to peek under his mess of floppy blond hair, and asks, “You wanna talk about?”

Oliver seems to turn the question over for about three seconds before blurting out, “When did you know you wanted to have sex with dad?”

It’s a ridiculously easy question for Rafael.

“About a week after a met him?” Rafael guesses, and he chuckles as Oliver groans again before answering more seriously. “You have to understand, sweetheart, your dad and I met when we were a lot older than you and Eli are. We were more experienced, had had other partners before. Sex was a natural progression after we started dating, it wasn’t like it was our first time.”

Rafael watches as Oliver nods, taking that in, gears turning behind blue eyes.

Then he asks, “So is it a good enough reason to have sex with Eli if I know that I love him? ‘Cause you loved dad even when you first started dating, right?”

Rafael nods, smiling softly, answering quietly, “Yes, I very much did. And that seems like a good enough reason to be intimate with someone to me.”

So Oliver shoots a happy grin of his own, and says, “Cool. Thanks, dad.” before turning his head back to his homework.

And Rafael gets up, happy to have helped clear his son from his crisis, but not without clarifying first, “Please, though, make sure that you do use these.”, pointing at the condoms as he speaks.

And then he tacks on at the end, just to embarrass his son a little bit more because he truly can’t help himself, “You may also want to invest in a little thing called lube, son. And don’t pretend like you don’t know what that is.”

All he can do is laugh and laugh as Oliver groans and slams his head to the kitchen table.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request: _My mum was recently talking to me about how her and my stepdad are only together for the sake of my little brother, who is only 6. She said that they love each other, but they aren’t IN love with each other, which broke my heart. And now I am in desperate need of some fluffy barisi being all sappy and in love to cheer me up. Like what they’re like when they first start dating, after they get married and/or when they’re further on in life, like when the kids are grown up._

Elisa’s visiting over spring break during her senior year at Harvard, and when she walks downstairs for breakfast to an usually cheery for eight o’clock in the morning Rafael, humming and sipping away at his coffee over the kitchen counter, she immediately knows that something’s up.

“Dad already leave for work?” she asks as she comes down the stairs, eyebrows furrowed at the fact that Rafael has his laptop open and in front of him in the kitchen. He hums in affirmation, eyes barely flicking up from the screen, and Elisa heads to the refrigerator for milk to pour herself a bowl of cereal when she spots over his shoulder the website that he’s looking at.

“Are those sunflowers?” she asks, setting the milk on the counter beside him, leaning into her dad’s space to look at the page that he has open. It’s very clearly the website for a local florist, and as Rafael starts scanning the prices of variously-sized bouquets, Elisa’s worried that she’s missed an important date that could be the reason as to why her father’s looking at flower arrangements in the first place.

“Wait,” she starts, backing up enough to take in Rafael’s face fully, his eyes still glancing over the lit-up screen in front of him. “Did I miss you and dad’s anniversary or something? ‘Cause I’ll totally run down to the store right now and get you guys a card if I did–-”

“You didn’t miss our anniversary,” Rafael cuts her off with a smirk-laden grumble, hidden behind the hand that he’s propping his chin up with. He pulls his wallet out from his back pocket then, clearly ready to pay for whatever arrangement that he’d selected when Elisa’s eyebrows shoot up to meet her messy curls. 

“So why are you ordering flowers then?”

The face that Rafael makes kinda has Elisa wanting to kick her dad in the ankle, because he looks so entirely  _put upon_  that she even dared to ask the question of why he’d been ordering flowers at eight o’clock in the morning on a Thursday in the first place.

But he smirks at her then, and throws his credit card down on the counter while he types in the number next, gaze firmly secured on the computer screen when he answers her, simply, “Because I love your father.”

And really, Elisa should’ve known. Her dads are constantly doing sappy crap like that for each other, the flowers that Rafael’s purchasing being no exception to that.

It still makes her smile a little bit brighter, though, and have a little extra pep in her step when she nods, and leaves Rafael to it, finally finding a box of cereal among the mess that is the Barba-Carisi pantry so that she can make herself some breakfast.

She sits across from Rafael as she eats, throwing quips back and forth between herself and her dad as he continues to type away at his computer, wrinkles showing in his forehead as he narrows his eyes in concentration every couple of seconds. Elisa’s about to ask him what it is that he’s working on that he looks like he’s about to give himself a brain aneurysm over when he straightens, and turns the laptop to face her, pushing it across the counter so that it’s sitting in front of her bowl of cereal instead of in front of him.

“Here, read for this for me. I was able to customize a card to send with the flowers. Tell me if you think what I wrote sounds okay,” Rafael says, sounding suddenly breathless and nervous.

Elisa giggles but pulls the laptop closer to her so that she can read what’s written on the screen anyways, teasing Rafael with the movement, saying, “Geez, dad, you don’t gotta sound so nervous, not like it’s your first date.”

Rafael shrugs, but Elisa can tell that he’s still worried, hope seeming almost to bloom outwardly from his chest at the thought that what he’d written to be sent in Sonny’s card could capture even a fraction of the love that she knows her dads still feel for each other to that day.

So, she decides not to tease him any farther, and instead turns her eyes downwards to read from the little box where he’d typed out his desired text.

> _Sonny,_
> 
> _I always expected that somewhere down the road, what we felt for each other would lessen. It was an inevitability in my mind, so many years ago, because nothing has ever lasted for me until I was given the chance to love you. But then I wake up, on mornings like the one that we had today, and I realize how foolish I was. Because every day, that I wake up with you in my arms, with you being the first thing that I see, I fall more in love._
> 
> _You will always be everything to me._
> 
> _Love,  
>  Rafi_

When Elisa looks up, soft smile in place and eyes full of tears, she simply says to him, “He’s gonna love it.”

And later that evening, when Sonny gets home from work, bypassing Elisa without even a “hey, sweetheart”, bouquet of bright yellow sunflowers in hand, she isn’t the slightest bit surprised that he heads straight for the kitchen, where Rafael’s preparing dinner.

And maybe she hops off the couch, socked feet light and quiet, and peeks around the corner of the entryway and into the kitchen because she’s a little bit nosy. So sue her.

Honestly, Elisa’s lucky that she possesses enough self control not to let out an audible “awe” at the scene that’s taking place in front of her.

Because there’s her two dads, tangled up in each other and leaning against the kitchen counter, Sonny with his arms thrown around Rafael’s neck and Rafael’s hands on his waist, the flowers discarded beside them as their foreheads meet in their embrace.

“You got me flowers,” she hears Sonny whisper sweetly, and Rafael’s looking into his eyes like Sonny’s the only thing in the world that could ever matter.

“I did,” he whispers back, smile so soft with the words, and when Sonny leans in for a kiss, Elisa can feel her chest bursting right along with them because she knows how important it was to her dad that Sonny know how much love was put into that little gesture.

Sonny pulls back, foreheads and chests still touching, and it’s so quiet and barely audible over the din of the overhead fan in the kitchen, but Elisa hears it anyways when he says to Rafael, “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Rafael replies, without hesitation, and he hugs Sonny close and presses a kiss to his temple that sounds an awful lot to Elisa like it had an, “Always.” attached to it.

And Elisa knows, in her heart and in her mind, that nothing could ever lessen the love that her dads have for each other. What they feel for one another is palpable, and real, something that she’s felt from the time that she was five-years-old, and she counts her blessings every day that she’s never had to doubt whether or not her parents are soulmates.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reqest: _im imagining our sweet boys together in their teens pre babies and sonny sneaks rafi up for a sleepover and they get caught by sonny's dad who is actually pretty chill_

It's a Saturday night when Sonny’s half-dangling his lanky torso out of his bedroom window, motioning into the darkness below him, “C’mon, Rafi, my parents just went to bed!”

Sonny watches in eager anticipation as Rafael uses one of the deck chairs to scale the porch easily, only needing Sonny’s help in pulling him fully into the bedroom when he reaches up his arm and grabs onto the ledge of Sonny’s window.

“Hey, baby,” he breathes out, arms immediately looping around Sonny’s skinny waist once he’s on sure-footing once more against the carpet of Sonny’s bedroom. 

All Sonny can do is blush and duck his head down and against Rafael’s chest, because really, they’ve only been dating for a few months at this point – Rafael’s affection is so new to him still, after he’d spent the better half of his sophomore year pining over the handsome boy who was the teacher’s aid in his AP chemistry class, who was  _so, so smart_ , and  _so funny_ , and who smiled at Sonny when he did something dumb, like trip over his own two feet while walking up to his teacher’s desk to turn in a test, rather than laugh at him like the rest of the class did.

Sonny still can’t believe that this boy is his, that Rafael is the one who kissed him softly one day after school, when he’d seen Sonny red-faced and upset after baseball practice, embarrassed because he’d fallen flat on his face in the field the one time that his coach had actually given him a chance to play.

But now his smart and handsome boy is going off to find bigger and better things at Harvard, and Sonny wishes that he never had to let him go, that the four months that they’ve had together so far weren’t most likely as far as they’d get before Rafael found an even cuter and smarter boy or girl who would fit in with his new college life.

So, Sonny sneaks him up for sleepovers sometimes (more like every weekend) so that he can get all of Rafael that he can before he has to deal with the reality of that happening.

“What do you wanna do tonight?” Rafael finally asks quietly, his hands rubbing up and down Sonny’s back as soft of the feeling of his cardigan against Sonny’s cheek. 

“Can we cuddle?” Sonny blurts out, face immediately burning, but  _there’s literally nothing more that he wants in the world right now,_  than to be held by his boyfriend, safe and close, while they huddle underneath his comforter and exchange sweet kisses.

Rafael smirks at him, though, and Sonny’s sixteen-year-old heart skips a beat at the quirk of his lips, and even more so when Rafael suggests, softly, “Yeah, we can cuddle. Maybe watch some movies, too?”

Sonny nods eagerly and drags him by the hand towards his bed, and pushes a chuckling Rafael down onto it so that he’ll get underneath the covers first, situating himself and opening his arms wide for Sonny to curl himself into.

Once he has his head laid on Rafael’s chest, Sonny gets the remote and opens up Netflix, selecting a random season of  _Friends_  to watch, for no other reason than the fact that he loves to listen to Rafael complain about it. Sonny thinks that the show is genuinely funny, while Rafael calls it “disgustingly white”, and he grips at Rafael’s waist a little tighter and giggles every time he makes a disparaging remark towards Ross and his relationship with Rachel.

They spend a few hours like that, Sonny growing increasingly quiet as the night wears on, the longer that he spends with his body pressed up against the boy that he’s already starting to love. 

Because Sonny can’t ignore it, the way that he can feel his heart physically breaking with every movement of Rafael’s chest, with every breath that he takes in with his nose pressed to the scratchiness of the fabric of the Harvard t-shirt that his mother had bought him right after he’d gotten his acceptance letter. Every moment that Sonny spends soaking in in his presence, his affection when he leans down and nudges Sonny’s nose for a kiss, his warmth as he becomes ever more a fixture in Sonny’s bed, is a reminder that this won’t last past the coming summer. That he’ll just be the dumb, kinda cute kid that Rafael left behind in the City. 

Rafael, of course, notices all of this.

“Why are you so quiet tonight?” he asks, after another episode ends with little grins from Sonny the most he’d gotten after each of his sarcastic –- and quite funny, if you ask him –- quips. “Did something happen before I came over? Did your parents say something about us again?”

Sonny’s head shoots up to look at him then, bright blue eyes wide as he says, “No, no, promise! They’re actually…adjusting, I think. My ma even asked at dinner how your valedictorian speech is coming.”

Sonny gives him a dimply smile at that, but it’s still half of what Rafael’s become used to receiving from Sonny, and his brows furrow further as he pulls Sonny closer to him and murmurs, “I can tell something’s bothering you though. You normally laugh at everything I say, even though I  _know_ I’m not that funny. Will you please tell me?”

He watches as Sonny dips his head shyly again, feels the way that his thin fingers tighten underneath his ribs –- still none of that prepares him, though, for when Sonny whispers out, “I don’t want you to forget me when you leave.”

Rafael tries to sit up a little to look better into Sonny’s eyes, but Sonny’s grip is too strong and he has to collapse with his head back against Sonny’s pillow, confusion marking the space between his brows as Sonny looks back up at him, bottom lip pulled taut between his teeth.

“What do you mean?” Rafael asks, “Why would I forget you?”, and Sonny shrugs, shaking his head, voice low and muffled by Rafael’s t-shirt as he answers.

“‘Cause, you’re gonna go off to Harvard and find people that are way better than me, Rafi, that’s why. I’m just a dumb kid whose only friend is his boyfriend, and who spends all afternoon at home, ‘cause even when I make the varsity team, coach won’t let me play ‘cause I’ve screwed up too many times in practice. Meanwhile, you’re smart, and cool, and have friends, and you’re in the drama club, and you’re senior class president, and why would you want a loser like me when you could have some guy who’s probably gonna be like, the next Hemingway or something?”

Sonny finishes with his eyes cast downwards, fingers picking lint off of Rafael’s shirt, a pout on his lips that Rafael would kiss if not for the fact that Sonny looks so strong in believing every word that had just left his mouth.

This time, when Rafael goes to sit up, he doesn’t let Sonny’s hold on him deter the movement –- he gets himself propped up against Sonny’s headboard, eyes stern as Sonny slowly moves to sit beside him, his gaze only softening when he turns and places a hand on Sonny’s cheek.

“Seriously, Sonny,” he starts, scoffing, because he can’t believe he has to explain this, “do you really think I would’ve started a relationship with you  _my senior year_  if I didn’t want it to last? Because seriously, if I just wanted to have fun with some ‘dumb kid’, I know a few that would be willing. Me going off to college doesn’t change the fact that I have fun with you, that I like spending time with you. I asked you out because I meant it.”

A small smile finds Sonny’s lips at Rafael’s words, because somewhere, deep in the more logical part of his brain, he’d known that he was being stupid –- Rafael wouldn’t hold him like he did, kiss him like he did, smile at Sonny every moment of every day like he did if every piece of him didn’t want to be with Sonny.

But he has to get validation once more, so he asks, playfully, “So you’re not gonna dump me for some hot dude with a trust fund?”

Rafael chuckles, and shakes his head, murmuring, “Not a chance.”, and Sonny just grins at him all blue eyes and dimples as Rafael crosses the space between them and pulls Sonny in for a deep kiss.

And just as Sonny is trying to be sly and take the kiss even further, slowly inching his way further and further to Rafael’s lap, he hears the deep thrum of his father’s voice carrying down the hall, sticky with sleep and asking, “Son? Why are still up? It’s one o’clock–?”

One second passes between Sonny and Rafael where they’re pulling back, eyes wide as they stare in horror at the blushes that have colored over both of their faces, and then Sonny’s shoving Rafael down so that he’s hidden underneath his blanket, hissing, “Go, Rafi, go!” as he hears the sound of his father turning the knob on his bedroom door.

Sonny definitely accidentally knees Rafael in the kidney once or twice trying to stuff him down underneath his comforter, and it’s by the grace of god only that Sonny’s dad somehow doesn’t hear the pained yelp that Rafael lets out when Sonny also manages to get him with a foot to the shin.

Because there his dad is standing, tired-looking and with narrowed eyes, in his pajama bottoms and a t-shirt as Sonny sits up and bed and tries to smile at him casually, saying a, “Hey, dad!” as the man squints in the light of his bedroom and looks around curiously.

“What are you still doing awake?” he asks, scratching at his chest, “We got church early in the morning.”

Sonny does his best to shrug and act nonchalant, gesturing to the TV behind him as he says, “I was just watching some movies. I’ll go to bed now, though, dad, promise.”

Mr. Carisi nods, but doesn’t leave the room, and Sonny feels all of the breath in his lungs tighten in his chest as his dad walks closer to him, and all he can do is pray that god is listening to him in that moment, and that his dad just wants to give him one last goodnight kiss to the head.

He’s stock still as his dad leans down, bracing for what will hopefully come, when Mr. Carisi whispers, “By the way, I heard that whole conversation you two just had. Looks like you’re hiding yourself a keeper underneath there, Son.”

Sonny gets a pat then to his rigid back, eyes unblinking and face a mottled red as his dad chuckles and pats him on the back, heading back to Sonny’s bedroom door.

He only says, “Just please make sure you’re out of here soon, okay, Rafael? I don’t want to have to explain to my wife why her son won’t get out of bed tomorrow morning.” before leaving, and then the bedroom door is back shut behind him, and Sonny’s stuck staring straight ahead until Rafael pops his head out from underneath the comforter, a hand snaking out to find purchase on Sonny’s knee.

“That was…unexpected,” Rafael says, and Sonny just nods, but there’s the beginnings of a grin settling over his face. He looks down at Rafael and lets it grow until his cheeks are dimpled, fingers lacing with his as he says happily, “I told you, Rafi. They’re adjusting. Now cuddle me for a few more minutes before you leave, okay?”

And well, Rafael is more than happy to do that. 

He puts strong hands on Sonny’s waist, and pulls him back down to the mattress laughing, wrapping the length of his arms around Sonny tight so that they’re cuddled close, no space between them to even breathe,  _Friends_  still droning on softly in the background.

And as Sonny relaxes back into his Rafael’s chest, he couldn’t imagine being any happier. He has his boy, a promise between them, and his family finally coming around to accepting who he is.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another high school AU, and this one wasn't a request! This idea just came to me one day and I decided to jot it down in head canon format since I knew that I wouldn't really be able to flesh it out into full-fic format with school and work going on.

The first time that they talk to each other, it’s in gym class of all places.

Rafael only knows the other boy’s name — “Sonny” — because of the daily attendance call that they have to endure, not because they share any other classes. Rafael’s a senior and thinks, based on appearance, that the other boy is a sophomore at the oldest. The only reason they’re in the same class is because Rafael put off fulfilling his physical education requirement as long as he could.

Really, he wouldn’t be subjecting himself to sweaty locker rooms and flying dodgeballs if he didn’t need the class to graduate.

But because he’s smart, and charming at that, Rafael manages to get out of an entire year of gym by simply offering to clean up and put away equipment at the end of the period for the coaches. Which is how he ends up only knowing the other boy by his first name, and the gangly way in which he runs around the gym when their class has to do laps.

Because Rafael has his deal with the coaches in place, he normally spends the period studying or doing homework. Being able to do either in a gymnasium filled with other students is a skill set he thinks should come in quite handy when he’s at Harvard, so he learns how to block the noise and cacophony of basketballs and warning whistles quite quickly.

And that strategy goes well for about three months, until Rafael hears the boy who he only knows by the name of “Sonny” getting picked on one day.

It starts out quietly enough, the skinnier, lankier boy getting teased for the awkward way he runs while he tries to play basketball with a group of boys in their period. He’s overly enthusiastic, though, and even Rafael in all of his concentrated efforts can’t quite block out the sound of voice, calling out above the noise of the gym, “Hey, pass it to me guys! I’m open!”

And when Rafael lets his gaze flicker upwards, he can’t help but feel his heart clench — because that kid, that skinny, desperate-to-fit-in kid, was who he used to be, when he was younger and on the elementary school playground.

Before he’d had an Eddie or an Alex to look after him, to always ensure his place in the game.

Even now, with the three of them going to different high schools because of zoning differences, Rafael knows he wouldn’t have made the easy transition into teenager that he did without them. They helped him make friends, find his place among a group of peers who were like-minded and determined to get out of the Bronx, and he can’t imagine he’d be in any different position than the younger boy in front of him if it hadn’t been for them.

And Rafael wants to say something, he really does, even if it’s something as simple as telling the other kids to leave him alone, but he doesn’t get the chance — because as soon as he’s rising from his spot on the bleachers, it seems as though the other boys are done simply ignoring Sonny, and one of them shoves into him, hard, knocking him to the ground as he tries to reach and block the thrown basketball.

“Watch where you’re going, Carisi!” He shouts, and Rafael’s only stopped from going over there himself by the sound of one of the coaches whistles, loud and approaching as he demands, “And what’s going on over here?!”

Rafael steps forward to say something when the younger boy puts his hand up from the ground, wincing a smile, saying quietly to the coach, “I’m alright, Mr. Evans. I just tripped, everything’s good. Just me bein’ a klutz.”

And the coach nods, huffs out, “Alright, well, get going, boys. Hand the basketball off to Rafael, the bell’s about to ring anyways.”

All Rafael can do is watch, staring, as the younger boy stands up, hand clutching at his side as he makes his way across the gym to go back to the locker room.

It only takes Rafael about five minutes to put away all of the equipment used that day, and as he heads to the locker room to grab his book bag before making the trek home, he expects to find it empty, as it usually is when he’s done with his end-of-the-period job.

Instead, he finds the younger boy, Sonny, sitting at one of the benches in the middle of the locker room, shirtless and red-faced, a bruise starting to blossom across the side of his ribs.

He can tell the younger boy’s been crying, which forces Rafael to pause and contemplate whether or not to approach him — he likes being alone in his own sadness and anger, like the times he leaves the house when his father comes home drunk. But he only knows the other boy’s been picked on, and probably feels alone, so he splits the difference.

He buys five minutes of time for the other boy to collect himself by going to the Mr. Evans’s office, unlocked at the end of the day so student athletes can use it for this express purpose, and goes to the cooler he keeps ice in, placing it in a plastic bag he finds on one of the shelves.

Then he walks back out, and approaches slowly, and holds out his hand to the other boy as he whispers tentatively, “Here. This is for you.”

Sonny looks up immediately, blue eyes wide and almost fearful still, until he sees the bag of ice offered in Rafael’s hand. He takes it carefully, presses it gingerly to his side, cheeks seeming to darken even more as he looks back downwards, whispering towards the direction of the locker room tile, “Thanks.”

Rafael only stays watching him about five seconds longer, only enough time for Sonny to glance over at him once more. Only after Rafael’s managed to shoot him a quick, reassuring smile does he finally leave, book bag in hand and a set of blue eyes following his back.

Come Monday, he’s almost forgotten about the entire incident, really.

That is, until it’s time for seventh period gym, and just as Rafael’s getting out his history essay to look over, he sees a pair of beat-up Converse approaching him.

He looks up fully, and sees Sonny.

Who’s smiling this time, albeit shyly, but smiling all the same, and who asks Rafael anyways, “Umm. Can I sit here?”

Rafael nods, slowly, and watches as the younger boy plops down on the bleacher beside him, gangly legs folding in on themselves to do so. He stares straight ahead, and stays quiet, though, so Rafael isn’t too bothered by him as he finishes looking over the rough draft of his essay.

And it goes on like that for a couple of days, Sonny approaching him, every day, at the beginning of gym class, quiet and shy and smiling, sitting and watching as the other kids play volleyball or run laps, as Rafael does whatever studying or homework he’d had planned for the period.

And then one day, Sonny finally speaks up.

It’s just like any other day, Sonny watching and observing until it isn’t, until he looks over at Rafael and blurts out, “What’re you working on?”

It catches Rafael so off-guard that he can only look up and stare back for a moment, the other boy’s cheeks immediately burning red when he doesn’t respond. But then he’s spluttering, just as Sonny’s beginning to look back down at his lap, “Calculus. I’m, uh, I’m in my second year of AP calc.”

Sonny nods, small smile peeking past his lips, and he says back, “I’m in pre-calc. It’s really hard. You must be really smart.”

All Rafael can do is smile back at that before turning back to his homework, glancing up every so often to see Sonny smiling softly down at his fingers in his lap.

And Rafael can’t help it — how happy he gets the next day when Sonny talks more, when he tells Rafael that pre-calc is challenging for him, and maybe could Rafael tutor him some if Sonny helps him study for his year-end exams?

Rafael likes his blue eyes, and he likes Sonny’s smile, and he likes the way his tongue pokes out in concentration when Rafael starts trying to help him out with his homework over the noise of the gymnasium.

Eventually, too, Sonny starts staying after class to help him put away the equipment. He has to, really, since he’s not participating anymore and it’s the only other way the coaches will give him credit, but Rafael knows that Sonny would stay anyways. He likes being around Rafael, and Rafael likes being around him, and one day Sonny almost misses his bus because he and Rafael stay too long after, laughing and going after each other with dodgeballs that they were meant to be putting away.

So he can’t help it, either, when one day Sonny smiles at him as they put the rest of the basketballs away, and he leans in, closing the space between them, and kisses him.

And he doesn’t expect it, but it’s immediate the way that Sonny pulls him closer, in their little corner of the gym — his hands bunch in Rafael’s t-shirt, and Rafael’s hands frame his sweet face, and it’s only a press of lips, nothing deeper, but still Rafael feels it all the way down to his toes.

When they pull back, Sonny’s chin drops to his chest, smiling so shyly, just the same way he had that very first day all those weeks ago when he’d approached Rafael for the first time. So Rafael takes the plunge, takes Sonny’s hands in his, and admits quietly, “I really like you. I have for awhile now. So I’m not just doing this because I feel sorry for you.”

That makes Sonny look up, blush deepening for having been caught. He asks, so softly that Rafael almost doesn’t hear it, “So you don’t think I’m a loser? You didn’t start letting me sit with you just ‘cause you saw me gettin’ picked on?”

Rafael shrugs, murmurs, “I gave you the ice because I saw you getting picked on. But I let you sit with me because you asked. And the I started liking you, started talking to you, started wanting to spend more time with you because you’re you. You’re funny, and sweet, and actually pretty damn smart. And I like that.”

This time, it’s Sonny who closes the space between them, and lets their lips find each other again.

Rafael found Sonny for the first time, in this gym, and regardless of the smell of sweat and dirt still on them from cleaning up, it feels perfect to keep kissing his perfect boy while they’re there.

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request: _If you are still doing AU's Rafael is a single dad to Elisa as Sonny is to Oliver and they meet when Sonny goes to enroll Ollie at the daycare at Elisa's school_

Rafael and Sonny meet at the little “Back to School” get together that Elisa’s elementary school puts on about a week before the actual school year starts. 

Rafael and Elisa are there, of course, to go and meet Elisa’s kindergarten teacher for the first time and check out her colorful and bright new classroom that she is so!! excited!! about!! while Sonny is there with Ollie to sign his baby boy up for the daycare program that the elementary school offers now that Ollie’s turned three.

Honestly, that first meeting, they barely say a word to each other. 

Elisa’s skipping done the hallway of the elementary school’s first floor, dragging Rafael behind her, when they pass the daycare and entrance and Elisa notices that a tiny, little blond boy who’s draped on a tall man’s hip has dropped the stuffed bear that he’d had with him.

So what does Elisa do?

She lets go of Rafael’s hand and races off across the hallway, skipping and bumping into people, but too worried about this poor little boy’s stuffie now laying alone on the school’s tile while Rafael is left to exasperatedly chase after her.

Stuffies  _are_  serious business, after all.

And she snatches up the blue little stuffed bear just as the tall man is approaching the entrance to the daycare, and of course bold little miss Elisa Barba goes right up to him and taps him on his leg where she can reach, saying, “ _Ex-cuse me_ , mister? I think he dropped this!” while pointing at the little boy.

And he shouts out, “Beary!” once he sees the blue bear in Elisa’s hand, and sweet baby Elisa gets the proudest little smile on her face as she hands the stuffed animal to him and the tall man says, “Oh my god! Wow, thank you, sweetie! Buddy, did you even know you dropped this? Can you tell this little girl thank you for saving your bear–-?”

And just as the little boy is about to whisper something out, his bear now safe and tucked into his little chest, Rafael rushes over and gets on his knees, eye-level with Elisa, panting out, “Elisa, conejito, you know you can’t just run away from me like that!”

Elisa, bless her heart, of course she gets all indignant because, “Papi, his stuffie was in immi-nem-nent danger! I _had_ to save him! And you say always be kind to people, and that was very kind of me, daddy!”

And Sonny, lord, he’s just watching in bewilderment, overwhelmed at first by how adorable this little girl is, but then  _oh fuck, her father is gorgeous, and he’s sweet, too, and Sonny is so fucked, he hasn’t been on a date in three years, lord help him,_  and then--

He tunes back in just in time to see the tan-skinned little girl pointing her index finger at himself and Oliver, the devastatingly pretty man’s eyes locked on his.

_Sonny is so beyond fucked_.

But their eye contact, it seems to push the other man into action, and the next thing Sonny knows, he’s murmuring out an apology and taking the little girl’s hand – much to her protests – and leading her down the hallway towards the kindergarten classrooms.

The next time that they meet again then, is of course, the first official day of school.

Rafael’s walking back down the hallway of the kindergarten section, back towards the entrance as he heads out from dropping Elisa off for her first day of school, when he passes the daycare drop-off and notices the beautiful man with the gorgeous blue eyes kneeling on the tile outside of the daycare’s door, obviously trying to coax a teary-eyed three-year-old into going inside.

Rafael can practically hear him begging, pleading, “Come on, baby, please? It’s gonna be so much fun, and you’re gonna make a whole bunch of new friends! And I’ll pick you up today, too, it won’t even be Lucy this time ‘cause daddy’s only working a half-day. Please, just at least try to go inside for me?”

But the little boy won’t budge, his tear-stained face buried in the man’s neck as his father rubs soothing hands up and down his back, and, well.

Rafael knows exactly what to do from Elisa’s own first day of daycare.

That’s his excuse, anyways.

He pretends to walk by them, almost half-way, faking a double take and looking down towards the ground at the little boy’s feet before stopping, going dramatically wide-eyed and saying, fake awe thick in his voice, “Are–are you…? But, no, no you can’t possibly be….I’m sorry, but I have to ask: are you  _the_  actual Spiderman?”

The little boy, for the first time since Rafael’s spotted them, removes his face from the crook of his father’s neck, slowly and shyly looks down at his Spiderman-themed sneakers before looking up and meeting Rafael’s eyes with a set of blue that so matches the ones that he’d spotted on the boy’s father the past week.

He doesn’t say anything, just watches as Rafael slowly kneels down next to him, the handsome younger man’s eyes on them both. Rafael manages to cool the pounding in his chest for at least a moment as he elaborates, as he says, “You must be him in disguise, yes? I mean, you have the shoes. And trust me, I know Spiderman when I see him.”

And the beautiful little boy, he smiles so sweet and shyly at that, and Rafael doesn’t think he’s ever seen such an adorable display –- besides his own daughter’s smile, of course –- until he catches the boy’s father lighting up at their little back-and-forth, and Rafael hasn’t seen anything so beautiful as the two men –- one little –- kneeling beside him since he held Elisa in his arms for the first time.

Rafael’s smile must be genuine enough, because the boy comes out of his cocoon of his father’s chest just slightly, speaking so quietly as he answers Rafael and says, “’m not a superhero. But daddy is. He’s a police officer.”

He turns his matching little blue eyes towards the beautiful man then, the scene making Rafael’s heart clench: the shine in his eyes while he looks at his daddy, smiling down at him, telling Rafael that this young man is the little boy’s hero in every sense of the word.

So Rafael continues, adding, “Well, certainly if your daddy is a superhero, than you have some of his bravery inside of you. Maybe even enough to go into that classroom over there all by yourself.”

The little boy draws back a little at that, until his father’s voice cuts in, as well, whispering, “It’s true, Ollie, if I’m a superhero, than so are you. You are just as brave and strong as me, and you always will be.”

At that, at his daddy’s words added to this strangers, the little boy –- Ollie. Oliver? –- seems to be okay. He looks at the pretty man, says, “Okay, daddy. I’m ready.” and takes his hand, his father guiding him towards the door for big hugs and kisses and “I love you’s so much” before he’s off and being led inside by one of the daycare’s assistants.

Rafael is about to take his leave, nerves settling back in now that he’s alone with this gorgeous younger man, when he hears a voice call out behind him, “How the hell did you do that?”

He turns over his shoulder, bewildered, until he sees that the other man isn’t mad –- in fact, he’s glowing from the inside out, his blue eyes shining and cheeks a rosy pink, and  _oh, good god, he has dimples, too_.

The younger man presses on, coming closer to Rafael’s space, saying, “Seriously, how? I was standing out here with him for twenty minutes, and then you come along and get him to go inside in five.”

Rafael chuckles –- he knows the feeling; Elisa had only gone inside her first day after coaxing from one of the pretty assistant’s with a promise of painting later on that day.

He answers, “My daughter was the same way her first time at daycare. And then today, her first day of kindergarten, she practically shoved me out of the door. It was nice to feel needed, even if it was only for five minutes.”

The younger man looks up through long lashes then, smiling shyly as he says, “Well, your little girl is lucky to have you if you’re anything like you were with my son with her. You were very sweet with him.”

And Rafael, well, if that look doesn’t do him in right there.

Before he has time to doubt himself, to think better of it, to second guess his decision, he rakes his gaze up and along the younger man’s form before asking, “I know that I don’t even know your name, but…would you…possibly like to go grab coffee with me? I have about an hour before I have to be at my office, and I’d very much like to spend that time getting to know you better. Starting with your name.”

And the man stutters out, “Y-yeah, of course, I’d love to.” that Rafael almost has to do a double take.

But then he allows himself to smile again, and gesture towards the door with a hand, and walk off down the hallway with a very pretty man who he’s already absolutely smitten with by his side.

And just as they’re about to reach the school’s entrance, the man turns to him and says, smile blinding,  “I’m Sonny. And my son who’s day you saved is named Oliver, by the way.”

Rafael can’t help himself but attempt to match that grin with one of his own, saying softly, “Rafael. And my daughter who saved your son’s stuffed bear is named Elisa, by the way.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request: _Oh god there's a photo in my house of me as a little kid with my arm around nothing and it turns out it was photo of me and my imaginary friend and now I'm just imagining Rafael finding a picture of Sonny like that when they visit his parent's house in Staten Island and Rafael asking, "What's up with this photo?" And Sonny barely glances over before saying, "Oh that's me and Super Sonny," without even thinking_

Mama Carisi is one of those people who takes and hangs up hundreds of pictures of each of her babies in various stages of their lives, and they’re just scattered around Sonny’s childhood home on Staten Island; the walls, random little side tables throughout the house, and lined up neatly along the mantle of the fireplace in the den.

So of course Rafael is scouring each and every room as Sonny guides him throughout the house on his own little tour the first time that he’s there for pictures of his boyfriend as a little kid, because Rafael has a hard time imagining anything sweeter than a little, skinned-up kneed Sonny.

So once they get to the den and Rafael spots the plethora of pictures that are lining the fireplace mantle, he absolutely has to take his sweet time examining every single one for a possible glimpse at his sweet-faced, blond-haired, blue-eyed detective before becoming the man that’s at Rafael’s side that day.

But then, he gets to a picture that really makes him pause, and not just because of how cute Sonny looks in it.

Sonny can’t be more than five or six in it, hair wild, and eyes bright, with a smudge of dirt across his cheek and a slightly bloody knee that tells Rafael that he’d been playing outside all day when this picture had been taken.

But then, Sonny has one skinny arm out to the side, hand cupped like he’s holding onto someone’s shoulder –- except, no one’s there.

It’s just his Sonny, young and cute as can be, with his arm thrown out like he’s holding onto an invisible best friend.

So Rafael takes the picture off of the mantle and brings it over to his boyfriend, who’s playing with one of the knick knacks that his dad keeps hidden downstairs in the den so that his mom won’t make him throw it out for being “useless”. He shows the picture to Sonny, and asks, quietly, “Sonny, is there supposed to be someone in this picture with you?”

Sonny barely looks over from what he’s doing before replying, nonchalantly, “Oh, yeah. That’s me and super Sonny.”

Rafael looks at him curiously, because, “Super Sonny? Was he your…imaginary friend, or something?”

And then Sonny sighs, putting down whatever weird antique thing he was messing with, before glancing over fondly at the picture and saying, “Yeah, he was. I just…I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, ya know? So I made up super Sonny. He was everything that I wanted to be. Strong, fast, brave. Not afraid to stand up to the kids who were mean to him.”

And Sonny looks up at Rafael then, smiling softly, and as adorable as the notion is that Sonny had an imaginary friend all those years to keep him company, he feels his heart breaking even more so.

Because the little boy in this picture, the adorable, goofy-smiling boy who would grow up to the be the best man that Rafael’s ever known, felt pain enough to make himself up a friend when the real-life ones weren’t what he’d expected them to be.

Because the little boy in this picture ever had to doubt that he was strong, and fast, and brave.

Rafael wraps an arm tight around Sonny’s waist, pressing a long, hard kiss to his cheek, letting his lips linger there as he whispers, “You know what I think? I think that you grew up and became your friend.”

Sonny looks down at him, confusion etched in the lines across his face, but Rafael doesn’t let him get a word in before continuing, “You grew up and became brave and strong. The bravest, strongest man that I’ve ever known. You don’t need super Sonny anymore because you became all of those things.”

And then he turns his head enough so that he can kiss Sonny on the lips, arms tight around a skinny waist as he says, “You’re my super Sonny now, instead.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request: _What if at like age 12, one of Elisa's friends suspects their parents are getting divorced. And Elisa asks why they think that and the friend says they don't kiss anymore they don't call each other cute names like they used to they don't communicate etc. And poor Elisa notices her dads are going through that too. So Elisa tries to throw them into romantic stuff finally they ask what's going on and reassure her that nothing is going on between them that they're just rung out from their case_
> 
> Note: The Sophia that is mentioned in this chapter is Elisa and Oliver's nanny.

Sonny and Rafael are such an affectionate couple to begin with that even a slight change in how much outward affection that they show to each other is noticeable to their baby girl.

She’s just so used to Sonny and Rafael constantly kissing, and touching, and giving each other hugs, and Rafael calling Sonny “love”, or “baby”, and Sonny constantly smiling all dopily at him when he does this.

So when she hears from her friend what her parents are going through, it immediately reminds her of how her dads have been acting for about a week, and she gets  _terrified_.

Because Elisa’s daddies are always supposed to be in love, and happy, and kissing each other all the time, whether it’s over breakfast or their morning coffee, or when they’re almost too tired to stand up but still need to feel each other’ love anyways.

So Elisa? Meddling, sweet, worried Elisa?

She concocts a plan to make sure that her daddies stay in love, just the way that they’re supposed to be.

With the help of Sophia (and Ollie, a little), they make a nice, romantic dinner to surprise Sonny and Rafael with once they get home from work.

They set out the dining table and everything, and put up candles, and set the food on Sonny and Rafael’s wedding china that’s normally only used for  _very special_  occasions.

And once Sonny and Rafael get home, they immediately notice the candles flickering away in the dining room of course, and their baby bunny standing happily in front of the table, Ollie having long been put to bed by Sophia after a long day at school wore him out.

Elisa doesn’t even give her daddies time to question her on it, she just starts pushing them both towards the table with a gigantic grin on her face, and an order to, “Eat all your food and be romantic, daddies!”

Their little girl doesn’t go far at all, though, no, she sets herself up at the coffee table in the living room to continue working on her newest art project – a watercolor family portrait – so that she can keep a close eye on her daddies while they eat their romantic dinner together.

But to Elisa’s chagrin, neither of them say a word to the other while they’re eating -– they’re just stuffing their faces full of the food that she and Sophia had prepared, barely even glancing up from their plates

And well, Elisa, she can’t she take it anymore.

So she throws down her paintbrush, and marches her little self over to the dining table and immediately demands, eyes already shiny with tears, “Why aren’t you talking?!”

Sonny and Rafael do look up at them, alarmed at the tone of voice that their normally so sweet baby girl is taking with them, but then they both see the tears shining in her big, green eyes and have to stop themselves from asking her what she’s doing yelling at them.

Sonny puts down his fork, and asks quietly, “What do you mean, baby, why aren’t me and daddy--?”

But she cuts him off, still shouting, “You’re not talking! Or kissing, or smiling, or being  _happy_!” and then she stops, little chest rising and falling as she asks, “Are you–-are you guys gonna get a divorce?”

And Sonny and Rafael are looking at each other wildly at that, Rafael trying to ask, “No, bunny of course of not, what would ever make you think that--?”

And Elisa just keeps going, the tears streaming down her cheeks now as she says, “Because Janie’s parents are getting a divorce, and–-and, she said they weren’t happy together anymore, and they weren’t kissing, or smiling, and that’s how you and daddy have been for like a week, and you guys aren’t supposed to divorce, you’re supposed to always love each other, and–-!”

Sonny and Rafael are immediately standing up, trying to pull their little girl closer by the arms and shoulders so that they can try and get her to calm down a little, Sonny trying to wipe the tears from her cheeks as Rafael speaks.

He says, “Bunny, I promise you, with my whole entire heart that your daddy and I will  _never_  stop loving each other, okay? Do you want to know why we’ve seemed so distant from each other this past week?”

And Elisa just sniffles, and nods, and Sonny squeezes her hand, and she chokes out, “Yes, please, papi, because I’ve been  _very_  confused.”

Rafael chuckles, and grabs her other hand, and says, “We’ve just been so damn exhausted from the case that we’re working. That’s all.”

And that makes Elisa laugh a little, because normally papi never curses around her or Ollie, so she knows that he’s trying to get her to smile, which makes her feel better.

Then she looks at them both, and asks, “Do you promise?” because just single sentence alone isn’t enough to get her to stop worrying completely –- she is Rafael’s daughter, after all.

So they both nod, and then lean into each other for a kiss, pulling back and smiling softly, and Elisa just grins, because  _that’s_  what her daddies are supposed to do.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request: _Anyways my favorite hc is that sonny can charm on demand for witness and his act his way through flirting but the second someone he’s actually interested in flirts with him back he’s a stuttering mess. Sure he flirted with barba like a pro when he knew barba was miles out of his league but when barba started flirting back? Sonny immediately forgot every word in every language he knows_

After one year of scoring himself a one-time date that wasn’t all that bad (and that also distracted him at least a little bit from a certain green-eyed ADA), Sonny volunteers to participate in the NYPD charity gala auction again the next year.

And the following year Rafael totally attends too, to see what all the fuss was about from the year before about Sonny auctioning himself off.

Absolutely not because he has a crush, of course.

Now Sonny’s been putting the moves on Rafael for years now, dropping every line that he knows in the book and bringing him coffee or takeout whenever he can, because Sonny knows that Rafael is way out of his league and would never reciprocate, so what’s been the harm in at least letting himself indulge a little bit in his unrequited crush?

Except Rafael totally has a crush on Sonny back, and totally internally screams every time Sonny looks at him with this gorgeous blue eyes, and totally internally swoons every time that Sonny comes by his office with lasagna or Chinese that he picked up from some hole-in-the-wall or other because, “C’mon, Barba, someone’s gotta take care of you, right?”

And finally, when Rafael finally decides that it’s the time to go ahead and give that teasing and flirting back to Sonny just as good as he gives, he decides to ease into it, not wanting to scare Sonny off after all this time.

Just subtle things, like, “You like nice today, detective.” and, “Blue suits you, Carisi. Brings out your eyes.” and even, “You look amazing.” when he sees Sonny in his NYPD blues at the charity gala.

But Sonny’s such a dork. He’s such a dork, and he’s been flirting with Rafael for so long at this point that he doesn’t even think anything of the compliment, doesn’t even begin to assume that Rafael could possibly reciprocate a decimeter of what Sonny feels for him, so he says back flippantly, “You look good, too, Barba! Nice tie!” and Rafael almost face palms right then and there at how unbelievably oblivious Sonny Carisi is.

And just as Rafael gathers some liquid courage and decides to make his intentions explicitly clear, it’s time for Sonny to head up onto stage and b _e paid for_  and _auctioned off_  to someone else.

Rafael honestly wasn’t planning on participating in the auction. He really wasn’t.

He completely agreed with Amanda that the entire thing reduced the women –- and man -– involved down to objects and that it was incredibly backwards-thinking of the NYPD to even come up with such a thing, but then it’s Sonny’s turn to take his place in the center of the stage and for people to start calling bids on him, and Rafael almost loses his damn mind.

There’s exactly ten people bidding on Sonny, all throwing out amounts bigger than the last until it gets to one particular woman that Rafael recognizes as another, lower-level ADA who works in his office. He’d introduced Sonny to her once while Sonny was shadowing, and she has a look in her eyes as she watches Sonny up on stage and throws out her bid like she wants to eat him alive.

Her amount is so high that no one else throws another bid out, so the auctioneer begins to call the whole thing, and Rafael’s pretty sure his heart’s never raced harder in his whole entire life as he heard those four little words, “Going once, going twice..”, and he’s shouting out, “A thousand!” before he even registers what he’s doing.

The woman’s shooting daggers at him that could kill, but Sonny’s staring at him wide-eyed from the center of the stage, and that’s all Rafael cares about as he hears the woman counter with, “Fifteen-hundred.”

They go back and forth like that for what feels like endless minutes, Rafael’s eyes on Sonny’s bright blue ones the entire time, and Rafael’s honestly afraid he’s going to have to put his car up if they don’t stop soon when he lets out a final offer of, “Forty-five hundred.” and the woman doesn’t make a peep.

She’s glaring at him still, obviously, because he managed to score the most gorgeous man at the entire gala, but he doesn’t care –- all he cares about is his Sonny –- not yet,  _but soon_ –- walking towards him with a shy smile on his face, eyes lowered as he approaches.

Sonny keeps his voice low as he says to Rafael, “Uh, thanks for that back there, counselor. You did me a solid. ‘Cause I really did  _not_ wanna go with that lady. Looked like she was gonna tear me apart with her teeth.”

Rafael smirks, because that’s exactly what he wants, too, but doesn’t say so yet.

Instead, he places gentle fingers on Sonny’s jaw and chin, thumb brushing the soft skin there as he lifts Sonny’s chin until their eyes meet, whispering out, “I think you should call me Rafael, detective.”

And there’s that wide-eyed look again, like Sonny can’t believe Rafael is real, can believe what’s happening –- can’t believe what’s happening between them is  _real_. His mouth is open, and Rafael knows he so badly wants to speak but can’t, so he brings Sonny down to him instead and kisses him soft and open-mouthed.

And  _god_ , how long he’s imagined this, how long he’s imagined having Sonny Carisi cradled in his arms like this –- so gorgeously pliant against him, beautiful, soft noises falling from between his lips.

Only when they both need air do they pull back, and then Sonny’s whispering, that awe that Rafael can’t believe he’s earned the right to deserve so clear in his eyes and voice, “Barba–-Rafael. All these years?”

Rafael nods, pulls Sonny closer to him, somehow impossibly closer and chuckles. He says, “To be fair, I didn’t start attempting to make my own feelings clear until about six months ago. You’re painfully oblivious, Sonny. I can’t believe it took me having to  _buy you_  to get you to finally see what I feel for you.”

And Sonny chuckles at that, and Rafael feels it against his lips, and Sonny blushes, too, and Rafael feels his skin heating up underneath his palm, and all he can do is kiss Sonny again and revel in how they’ve ended up here, together, after three years of miserable attempts at flirting through coffee and compliments.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request: _So I have this thought that Barba is like Gordon Ramsey, harsh with people who should know how to do their jobs, but like a sweet angel when it comes to his kids. Can you Imagine, the first time the squad (Liv woud have already seen this) sees him with Elisa! OMG! Wouldn't that be a god damn treat tho! They're like who's this guy being all soft and patient and...Cute?_

If anyone’s going to be absolutely mindblown at Rafael and his sweetness when it comes to little Elisa, it would have to be a new detective to the 16th precinct who joins the squad a couple of years down the line.

Her name is Detective Lauren Alvarado, and she knows three things about EADA Barba.

One, he’s married to Detective Carisi.

Two, he and Detective Carisi have a daughter.

And three, he’s possibly the most terrifying and intimidating man that she’s ever breathed the same air as.

So when Lieutenant Benson stops in front of her desk one day and hands her a stack of paperwork and instructs her to take it over to EADA Barba’s office –  _alone_ , because Detective Carisi is out with Rollins chasing down a lead on one of their current cases – her heart immediately starts to beat out of her chest.

There’s literally nothing that she would like to do less in the world than spend a single second alone with the man who chewed her and Sargeant Dodds out just a week ago for screwing up the chain of custody on a double homicide they’d been working, but the look in her lieutenant’s eyes when she hands the paperwork over leaves no room for discussion.

So it’s with her heart in her throat that she gets up, paperwork in hand, and makes the drive down to the office building where all of the DA’s for Manhattan work, steps heavy and dragging with the anxiety that she feels building behind her ribs as she steps off of the elevator and walks down the hall, past a quickly typing away Carmen who barely spares her a glance as she steps in front of EADA Barba’s office door and knocks.

“Come in,” an all-too-familiar voice calls out, and Alvarado takes a deep, grounding breath before she turns the knob and steps through the office door.

No amount of pep talks in her head on the drive over, though, could have prepared her for the sight that she’s greeted with when she finally enters EADA Barba’s office.

Because he’s sitting on the couch, paperwork and what looks to be a mug of coffee discarded and pushed to the side as a little girl takes up the space in front of him as she sits on his lap, a far more interesting pile of Froot Loops in the space where Alvarado is pretty sure the paperwork used to be as EADA Barba sticks another – because his other long fingers have already been covered –- green ‘o’ onto his pinky finger and wiggles his hand, the little girl erupting into a fit of giggles that causes the man to break out into a genuine goddamn grin.

Finally then, he looks up, eyebrows raised as Alvarado tries to quickly school the wide eyes and gaping mouth that she knows she had just seconds before, and if Barba caught her in the act, he doesn’t make mention of it, choosing instead to sigh, and say, “Good afternoon, Detective. Was my husband unavailable?”

“Uh–” Alvarado chokes out, unable to tell if Barba’s joking with her or not, but her full answer gets cut off anyways by the little girl fidgeting with the cereal that Barba’s still wearing on his fingers, excitement seemingly radiating out from her little body as she looks up at the man and exclaims, “Daddy?!”

Barba chuckles at that and places a kiss to the little girl’s head, all soft and sweet and everything that Alvarado never even dreamed that the man would be capable of as he gets quiet and answers her question.

“No, not yet, he’ll be here later, though, conejita, okay? Here, let papi get up so I can talk to the nice later who works with daddy really quick and then we’ll finish our snack.”

_Nice lady?_ , Alvarado thinks, but doesn’t question it, instead choosing to watch quietly as Barba holds the little girl around the waist and gets her safely seated on one of the couch cushions on her own, not even bothering to remove the Froot Loops from his fingers as he walks around the coffee table and approaches her.

“Alright, Detective, what has your lieutenant sent you over with this time?” Barba murmurs as he takes the stack of paperwork from her, licking a finger to flick through each page easily as his eyes scan rapid fire over each one’s text.

He’s almost to the last page, then, when each of their heads whip around at the sound of a crash and something breaking, and a tiny gasp of, “oops!”, that has Alvarado’s heart already breaking.

Because when she turns to look, Barba doing the same beside her, the little girl is hovering near the side of the coffee table where Barba’s paperwork and mug had been sat, the latter now shattered all across the table’s surface as its contents drip downwards and onto the carpet, soaking into the material and the discarded paperwork.

Alvarado really doesn’t want to stick around for this, for the tongue-lashing that she’s sure the little girl with the tears forming in her big green eyes is about to face, for the blustering bravado that is an angry Rafael Barba at having his paperwork ruined from a coffee spill, and maybe if she just slips out the door, he won’t notice–-

“Princesa, are you okay?! Did you cut yourself anywhere?!”

Alvarado stops dead in her tracks as she watches Barba rush over to the little girl, sweeping her up and into his arms and away from the sharp shards of ceramic scattered all across the coffee table and carpet, his Froot Loop-adorned hand immediately finding both of hers and checking for any cuts that might have resulted from the mug breaking.

“I’m sorry, papi, I–-I didn’t mean to!! I was just thirsty, so I picked up your cup, and–-and–-!!”

Barba shushes her then, his big hand coming up to settle against her cheek, the few tears that managed to spill over from her eyes wiped away by the tip of his thumb. 

“Hey, hey, it was an accident, princesa, accidents happen,” he starts, voice gentle but firm, and everything that his little girl apparently needs to hear as she nods and her little chest stops heaving. “Don’t you remember what I did last night during dinner?”

At that, the little girl’s eyes widen almost comically, cheeky grin coming over her tear-stained cheeks as she grabs her father’s hand and shrieks, “You spilled daddy’s spaghetti  _all over_  him!! All over his favorite suit! The blue one, that you always say matches his pretty eyes!!”

Oh, and isn’t that the most delightful thing to hear, Alvarado thinks as she bites down on the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning like the cat that caught the canary as Barba glances over at her and blushes furiously at his daughter’s words. He ignores her, though, in favor of pressing a kiss to the little girl’s forehead, his lips lingering there as he murmurs, “That’s right, conejita. So please don’t think papi’s mad at you for that, okay?”

And when the little girl answers by throwing her arms around Barba’s neck and hugging him close, well. Alvarado finally manages to excuse herself to stop from tearing up at the sight of the man who she’d thought she’d known everything about becoming so gentle and kind in the presence of his baby girl.

And later that day, back at the precinct, when Carisi and Rollins finally walk back through the door and collapse at their desks, their lead apparently having gone no where, Alvarado makes it a point to stop by Carisi’s desk on her way into the breakroom to make herself another coffee.

“Hey,” she says quietly, Carisi looking up from his phone warily to find her gaze, brows furrowed at the softness of her tone.

“The lieutenant sent me over to Barba’s office this afternoon to drop off some paperwork. Your little girl was there with him. I have to admit, I didn’t really understand why you married him before, but…he was really sweet with her.”

Carisi smiles at that, eyes going soft, and Alvarado can almost see him picturing it in his head, the thousands of possibilities of what sweet thing his husband could have possibly done that he missed out on seeing because of getting caught up in work. 

“Well, don’t you dare ever tell him I showed you this,” Sonny whispers back, leaning conspiratorially towards her and across his desk as he looks back down at his phone and unlocks it, pulling up a photo album in his picture app. “But…”

He trails off and turns the screen of his phone towards her, Alvarado faced with an image that has her heart clenching in its sweetness – EADA Barba, eyes closed and passed out on the couch, a sleeping little girl curled up against his stomach and chest and mirroring his expression as the glow from the TV illuminates them both in blue.

She pulls back and grins at Sonny after a few seconds, pretending to zip her lips with her fingers as he chuckles and closes out of the image, but not before Alvarado catches a glimpse at the title of the album that the picture had belonged to –-  _My Man and Our Baby <3_.

Well, that’s just one more thing that Alvarado will just have to keep to herself.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request: _Sonny being super stressed out about some cases and now Elisa has a doctors appointment and he shouts “Bunny you have to hurry please!” And little El comes out with only one shoe on and her coat unzipped huffing and puffing cause “daddy you aren’t waiting patiently! Patience is waiting without complaining!”_

Elisa's just turned five, and they had the big kindergarten talk with her not too long ago, so she wants to be a “big girl, daddy!!” and get ready on her own, and Sonny is trying _so hard_  to leave her be and let her do that because that’s what his baby girl wants and he is a weak, weak man when she looks up at him and says, “ _Please_ , daddy?” with big green eyes exactly the same shade as Rafael’s.

But they should have left for her doctor’s appointment ten minutes ago if they wanted to make it there on time in order for Sonny to pass her off to Rafael before rushing back to the office without getting an ass-reaming from Liv, and he knows Rafael is going to make fun of him for being late because  _Sonny Barba-Carisi is never late to anything_ unless a sassy five-year-old is involved, and he’s just  _stressed_.

So he shouts out in the sweetest, most loving way that he possibly can, down the hallway and in the direction of Elisa’s bedroom, “Bunny, you have to hurry, please!” before looking down to take a peek at the time on his watch once again.

And not five seconds later, while Sonny’s fidgeting absentmindedly with his tie, little Elisa comes huffing down the hallway, an incredibly Barba-like scowl on her normally sweet little face, one sneaker untied and on the wrong foot, and her puffy pink parka unzipped and thrown over only one shoulder.

Sonny gapes at her, blue eyes wide as he watches her come down the hallway like that, and what he really wants to say – what he’s thinking – is, “Why the hell does it look like your closet threw up on you, and what in Christ’s name were you doing for the last twenty minutes?” when Elisa stops in front of him, scowl still set firmly in place.

“Daddy, you aren’t waiting patiently! Patience is waiting without complaining!” she exclaims, little hands flying just like Sonny’s do when he gets worked up and upset, and his heart is clenching as he watches her, mind completely ignoring the fact that she’s still half-dressed. 

That is, until Elisa stops reciting the words that Sonny and Rafael always say so gently to her whenever she gets antsy in line at the store or waiting for a movie to start at the theater, and he notices that her big green eyes are wet.

“Baby, hey, hey, hey, what’s the matter?” he asks softly, getting down on his knees to better reach her as Elisa rushes forward and crashes face-first into his chest. 

Sonny rubs up and down her back as best as he can with the barrier of her parka in the way, shushing her as Elisa presses her face into his pea coat and cries, little fingers digging into his shoulders.

“I couldn’t figure out which foot,” Sonny hears, muffled by the fabric of his jacket, and he pulls back until he has Elisa’s face in his hands, his thumbs coming up to rub gently at her cheeks as he sniffles and pushes her dark curls out from where they’d been sticking to her wet cheeks.

“What do you mean you couldn’t figure out which foot?” Sonny murmurs, and Elisa looks at him like he’s the biggest pain in the ass in her entire five-year-old life for even _thinking_  to ask that question, and yeah, he’s pretty sure he’s seen that very same look mirrored on Rafael’s face before, and yeah, he’s gonna have to talk to his husband about that.

“I couldn’t figure out which foot!” she repeats, hands flapping downwards towards the tile underneath them, and it’s then that Sonny remembers how she’d walked out of her bedroom only a few minutes prior, half-dressed and tripping over the sneaker that she’d shoved on the wrong foot.

“I can’t be a big girl if I can’t put on my shoes,” Elisa grumbles, softly and with her chin hanging against her chest.

“Hey, Bunny, come on, look at me,” Sonny whispers, and it’s all he can do to take Elisa’s little hands in his and press kisses to her fingertips until she finally lifts her head to look at him, fighting off a grin at the feeling of Sonny’s lips tickling her skin.

“You can still be a big girl and need daddy’s help to put on your shoes,” he says, smiling at her, imploring her with wide eyes to believe him. “I promise. No matter how old you get, you can always ask for me and papi’s help.”

Elisa looks like she doesn’t quite believe him, brows furrowing in the same way that they had the night she’d gotten out of bed and walked in on Rafael sucking on his neck on the couch and they’d had to convince her that papi was  _not_ , in fact, a vampire after one of her cartoons had done a Halloween special.

(The only time that Sonny had ever hated in his life how observant he and Rafael’s child is was when he’d carried her out to the kitchen for breakfast the next morning and she’d demanded to know why, if papi wasn’t a vampire, he’d left a boo-boo on daddy’s neck.)

So Sonny looks at her, and says, “Actually, you know what Aunt Amanda told me? She said she actually had to sleep in Jessie’s room with her the other night ‘cause she had a really bad nightmare and got scared. She had to sleep with her _all_ night in her bed ‘cause Jessie wouldn’t let her leave.”

“But Jessie’s _ten_ , daddy!” Elisa exclaims, eyes wide in wonder, and Sonny chuckles as he picks her up and slings her on a bony hip, zipping her jacket up with the hand that’s not keeping her safe and secure against his chest as he walks back in the direction of her bedroom to find the missing sneaker.

“Yeah, well, everyone needs help from their daddy or mommy some times, no matter how old they are,” he says, holding onto Elisa tight once he spots the sneaker near the doorway of her room, bending down to pick it up before holding it in front of Elisa’s face with a smile. “So, can I help you put these on before we go meet papi at the doctor’s?”

And when they finally arrive at the doctor’s, twenty minutes late and to hello/goodbye kisses from Rafael, Sonny’s just about to head out the door and back to the precinct when he catches a glimpse of Elisa walking over to where Rafael’s sitting, picture book that she’d found in the office’s playroom in hand.

And he stops, and watches, as she climbs right into Rafael’s strong, waiting arms, back settling against his broad chest as she opens the book and looks up at him, green eyes wide and smiling so sweetly.

“Will you help me read, papi? ‘Cause I’m a big girl, but I don’t know all my words yet,” she asks, and when Rafael looks back towards the door and at him, a quizzical grin on his face, Sonny feels warm all the way down to his toes.


End file.
